Managing Cultural Landscapes: Reconciling Local Preservation and Institutional Ideology in the National Park Service

Laura Alice Watt

Laura Alice Watt

B.A. University of California, Berkeley, 1988 M.E.M. Duke University, 1992

A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of

Doctor of Philosophy

Wildland Resource Science

in the

GRADUATE DIVISION

of the

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY

Committee in charge:

Professor Sally K. Fairfax, Chair Professor Paul Groth Professor Lynn Huntsinger

Fall, 2001 ABSTRACT

Managing Cultural Landscapes: Reconciling Local Preservation

and Institutional Ideology in the National Park Service

Laura Alice Watt

Doctor of Philosophy in Wildland Resource Science

University of California, Berkeley

Professor Sally K. Fairfax, Chair

The purpose of this dissertation is to ask, what happens to a cultural landscape

once the National Park Service (NPS) and its approaches to management and national

heritage become involved with preserving it? The historical development of the agency

has resulted in national criteria, both for what “counts” as heritage and for how to manage

park landscapes, which prevail over both local priorities and uniqueness over time.

Drawing on the fields of environmental history and landscape theory, I hypothesize that

the processes of NPS preservation and management reshape landscapes, moving them

away from the local characteristics that may have caused them to be preserved in the first place, and toward a reflection of NPS institutional ideology: increasingly nationalized, arrested, and natural. I investigate this question on the ground by conducting an in-depth

1 case study of the processes and outcomes of landscape change at Point Reyes National

Seashore.

After conducting analysis of historic documents, interviews and field

observations, I find that NPS management has reshaped the landscape toward a greater

reflection of the agency’s values of national significance, unchanging scenery, and

natural resources. The primary avenues of landscape change have been policies that

result in the reduction in the number of active residents within the park, removal of

historic buildings, and management and interpretation that emphasize natural over

cultural resources. While not all of these changes have been the direct intentions of NPS staff, their cumulated effect is to overwrite the existing cultural landscape with a new set of meanings, changing the local landscape into a National Park-scape.

This dissertation concludes that the NPS is not the optimal agency to do cultural landscape protection, unless it can acknowledge and/or shift away from its ideological foundations. Evidence from this and previous research suggests that such a shift is unlikely to occur, as the agency has such a strong historical conception of what a national park “ought” to look like, and attempts at challenging this conception in the past have not resulted in much change.

2 TABLE OF CONTENTS

List of Figures iii

Acknowledgements iv

CHAPTER 1 – Introduction

I. The Research Problem 1

II Overview of Dissertation Structure 3

CHAPTER 2 – Theories of Landscape and Preservation

I. Introduction 12

II. Landscape as a Social Construct 16

III. Preservation 34

IV. How Do Landscape and Preservation Theory Relate to the NPS? 54

CHAPTER 3 – Historical Development of NPS Ideology

I. Introduction 56

II. Three Ideological Themes 59

III. NPS Management Of Inhabited Landscapes 80

IV. NPS Treatment Of Historic And Cultural Resources 95

V. Conclusion 116

CHAPTER 4 – Preservation Of A Particular Landscape: Point Reyes

I. Introduction 119

II. Historic Background 121

III. Theme One: Local and Vernacular to Nationalized and Standardized 129

IV. Theme Two: Working to Arrested 154

V. Theme Three: Cultural to Natural 176

VI. New Attention to the Cultural Landscape 199

VII. Conclusion 202

CHAPTER 5 – Conclusion 204

APPENDIX A – National Historic Register Criteria 211

APPENDIX B – Point Reyes Ranch Data 213

APPENDIX C – Olema Valley Ranch Data 227

BIBLIOGRAPHY 234

ii LIST OF FIGURES

CHAPTER 1

Figure 1.1: Location map of PRNS and GGNRA 7 Figure 1.2: PRNS sign 8

CHAPTER 4

Figure 4.1: Map of Shafter dairies 122 Figure 4.2: Typical Shafter dairy layout 124 Figure 4.3: Kehoe (J) Ranch 125 Figure 4.4: Dairy cows at Kehoe 125 Figure 4.5: Radio towers on MCI/AT&T lands 127 Figure 4.6: Map of Olema Valley ranches 128 Figure 4.7: Southern entrance to Olema Valley 129 Figure 4.8: Chart of subdivision activity 134 Figure 4.9: Changes in land ownership 139 Figure 4.10: Ranch signs, official and vernacular 143 Figure 4.11: PRNS uni-grid map cover 144 Figure 4.12: Intersection of county- and NPS-maintained roads 145 Figure 4.13: Bear Valley Visitor Center 146 Figure 4.14: Hay barn at Pierce Ranch 147 Figure 4.15: Drake’s Beach Visitor Center 147 Figure 4.16: Deteriorating barn at Horick (D) Ranch 149 Figure 4.17: Dairy cows at Spaletta (C) Ranch 156 Figure 4.18: House at Horick (D) Ranch 162 Figure 4.19: Administrative offices at Bear Valley 163 Figure 4.20: Wilkins Ranch/Rancho Baulines 165 Figure 4.21: Pierce Ranch in fog 167 Figure 4.22: Randall House 169 Figure 4.23: Pastoral zone sign 172 Figure 4.24: Location of pastoral zone sign 172 Figure 4.25: Sign at F Ranch site 173 Figure 4.26: Picnic table at F Ranch site 178 Figure 4.27: Scene at F Ranch site 178 Figure 4.28: Hikers approaching Lower Pierce Ranch site 179 Figure 4.29: Map of possible recreation developments, 1961 183 Figure 4.30: Drake’s Beach 184 Figure 4.31: PRNS map, including wilderness designation 189

iii Figure 4.32: Elk fence 191 Figure 4.33: Two bull elk in rutting season 192 Figure 4.34: Eucalyptus line between G and H Ranches 193 Figure 4.35: Fence line between grazed and ungrazed lands 194 Figure 4.36: Interpretive sign at Drake’s Estero 195

iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The task of completing this project would have been impossible but for the contributions of many others, and for that I will be forever grateful. These contributions took many forms. The most basic was the generous funding I received from the Canon

National Parks Science Scholars Program, as well as the support and interest of the wonderful community that this program is currently generating. Many thanks to Canon

U.S.A., Inc. for the financial support, and to the National Park Service, the National

Parks Foundation, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science for their participation in this wonderful research program. Thanks too for the tireless efforts by Gary Machlis and Sandy Watson to keep things rolling smoothly for us scholars.

Various individuals in the National Park Service were essential to my research, particularly at the Point Reyes National Seashore. Superintendent Don Neubacher,

Assistant Superintendent Frank Dean, and Director of Cultural Resources Gordon White were all tremendously cooperative with my work, providing access to historical files and explaining various aspects of park policy and management. All of the park staff were always helpful and friendly, making it a wonderful place to spend days reading old documents. In addition, Bob Page, the Director of the Park Historic Structures and

Cultural Landscapes Program in Washington, DC, provided me with a great deal of insight into the agency’s efforts at the national level to protect cultural landscapes. Dave

Louter, a historian in the Seattle NPS office, was an invaluable source of advice and perspective. Finally, Dewey Livingston’s encyclopedic knowledge of West Marin made

iv him an essential research source, not to mention my delight at getting to know such a friendly person and hearing all of his wonderful stories.

My major professor, Sally Fairfax, has provided tireless support and guidance over many years; if I someday become even half the scholar that she is, I will be enormously proud, and much of the credit for that transformation will be hers.

Committee members Paul Groth and Lynn Huntsinger gave me their insight and unflagging enthusiasm, and helped to craft this sprawling project into a coherent dissertation. Several other professors at Berkeley also deserve thanks: Jeff Romm for his early efforts as my advisor and his continued interest in my progress; Nancy Peluso for her input and suggestions on my first proposal drafts; and Carolyn Merchant for involving me with her classes and giving me a bounty of inspiration.

I never would have made it this far without a number of incredible friends, many of whom helped me through the highs and lows of the graduate student experience with their kindness, perspective, and even simply providing much-need distraction at times!

Cissie Bonini and Becky Lekven have been my timeless partners in crime; Tim Frommer tolerated much complaining and could always be relied upon for support; Jen Sokolove,

Sarah McCaffery and Kate O’Neill read numerous drafts and provided valuable feedback; and Craig Castellanet, Paul Hilcoff, Nicole Hunter, Craig Mayer, Jack Rabid,

Judy Teichman, and Carl Zimring all deserve many thanks for their caring and entertainment. Sandy Blaine kept me limber, Anne Cohn kept me sane. Most of all,

Leigh Raymond has read countless drafts, shared countless cups of coffee, listened to countless stories, and has been the most amazing dissertation-writing partner I ever could have hoped for.

v Finally, the most essential foundation for my life has always been my wonderful family. Thank you for everything, literally.

vi CHAPTER 1

Introduction

I. The Research Problem

The purpose of this dissertation is to ask, what happens to a cultural landscape once the National Park Service (NPS) and its approaches to management and national heritage become involved with preserving it? The historical development of the agency has resulted in national criteria, both for what “counts” as heritage and for how to manage park landscapes, which prevail over both local priorities and uniqueness over time. Drawing on the fields of environmental history and landscape theory, I hypothesize that the processes of NPS preservation and management reshape landscapes, moving them away from the local characteristics that may have caused them to be preserved in the first place, and toward a reflection of NPS institutional ideology: increasingly nationalized, arrested, and natural. I investigate this question on the ground by conducting an in-depth case study of the processes and outcomes of landscape change at Point Reyes National Seashore. This topic is significant for two important reasons. First, by exploring the role of institutional ideology in steering landscape change, my work adds to the theoretical understanding of how landscapes are used as tools of power. Previous researchers have shown that institutions often intentionally manipulate the landscape and its meaning as a way to marginalize others’ interpretations of it.1 As an extension of this approach, my study investigates the degree to which NPS management both intentionally and

1 See Denis Cosgrove, Social Formation and Symbolic Landscape (1984), Barbara Bender, Landscape: Politics and Perspective (1993), and Don Mitchell, The Lie of the Land: Migrant Workers and the California Landscape (1996), for starters.

1 unknowingly reshapes park landscapes to reflect the institution’s historic beliefs and priorities. More generally, this work shows how preservation, while often well- intentioned, can become a tool of definition and control in a landscape, rewriting the place according to the idealized image of what the preservers want it to be. Second, my work contributes to further developing and refining landscape protection policy in the Park Service. Policy makers and park managers need better awareness of the historical trends and on-the-ground outcomes of NPS management of cultural landscapes so that effective landscape preservation can be sustained over time. If NPS involvement creates its own distinctive imprint in cultural landscapes, the agency may wish to adjust its management policies so as to minimize these tendencies. This is of particular importance and urgency in park units where the human activity that created the cultural landscape is still active, as the changes resulting from NPS policies may impair the residents’ own sense of landscape meaning and significance, or even their ability to persist as a functioning community. At the very least, park personnel should be aware of this dilemma, so as to have greater clarity regarding the intent and goals of management, and greater recognition of the ways in which management may affect the landscape. There is nothing inherently wrong with causing change within parks, but the NPS should be cognizant of these processes and their implications for residents, visitors, and park managers themselves. Examining this issue now is particularly timely, as the NPS is currently struggling with the question of how best to manage cultural landscapes. Increasing numbers of new parks include existing human settlements as part of the protected landscape, and many of these places have encountered serious controversy resulting from implementation of management policies. In some cases NPS management has overlooked the needs of the residents, resulting in what Joseph Sax has called “communities programmed to die.”2

2 Joseph L. Sax, “Do Communities Have Rights? The National Parks As A Laboratory of New Ideas,” University of Pittsburgh Law Review 45:499-511 (1984), at 505.

2 At the same time, interest and concern with the preservation of cultural landscapes has increased within the NPS.3 In a recent collection of articles on managing cultural landscapes, Alanen and Melnick identify the NPS as the primary force in the nascent cultural landscape preservation movement since the agency first recognized them as a specific resource type in 1981.4 Hence it is crucial to understand what likely outcomes can be expected from the Service’s involvement. Yet while some excellent research has been done on how NPS management has shaped biological resources over time, very little if any looks at historical change in cultural landscapes within national parks.5 My research thus makes a significant contribution both to the theoretical understanding of cultural landscapes and the current challenges facing the NPS in its efforts to improve protection of these places. From a larger perspective, this project focuses on preserved cultural landscapes because they represent a middle ground, in which both functioning ecosystems and working human communities and cultures coexist as part of an integrated whole, rather than managed as separate and oppositional. People need to understand their role in the larger landscape, to see that they are part of nature and not something separate from or above it. Protected landscapes that aim to conserve both natural and cultural resources with active, thriving interactions help us to see these connections. Thus this research will help move landscape preservation and management toward achieving greater sustainability.

II. Overview of Dissertation Structure

3 See National Park Service, Cultural Resources Management Guideline, NPS-28 (1997), also Robert R. Page, Cathy A. Gilbert, and Susan A Dolan, A Guide To Cultural Landscape Reports: Contents, Process and Techniques (1998), and Richard Westmacott, Managing Culturally Significant Agricultural Landscapes in the National Park System (draft 1998). 4 Arnold Alanen and Robert K. Melnick, “Introduction: Why Preserve Cultural Landscapes?” in Alanen and Melnick, eds., Preserving Cultural Landscapes in America (2000), at 7. 5 For example, Alston Chase, Playing God in Yellowstone: The Destruction of America's First National Park (1984) and Richard Sellars, Preserving Nature in the National Parks: A History (1997).

3 Chapter Two identifies the current theoretical understandings of landscape and preservation, and how these two complex processes interact and affect each other. Landscapes function as dynamic social expressions, reflections of larger struggles for control or power over the land, its meaning, and the people who live and work on it. Preservation also invokes struggles over power, but necessarily involves stasis, bringing change to a standstill; hence preserved landscapes are a bit of an oxymoron, caught in tension between changing social and natural forces and the preservation impulse to hold everything still in perpetuity. By bringing together schools of theory about each of these concepts, this project will provide a cohesive framework for understanding the specific dynamics of preserved landscapes. This framework can then be applied to clarify the expected interactions and outcomes when an agency such as the NPS undertakes the preservation of cultural landscapes specifically. The third chapter investigates how this framework has functioned at the national scale for the NPS. First, it explores the historical evolution of the ideas held by NPS as an agency about what a park ought to consist of, and how it ought to be managed. These assumptions actually began developing long before the agency itself was established, back when the U.S. government first set aside parks as cultural icons of national pride and superiority. Relying mostly on secondary sources from an increasingly mature Park Service literature, this historical research reveals three major ideological themes essential to understanding the agency’s perspective on cultural landscapes, which we might call the “romantic” park image: 1) nationalism and standardization as essential to creating official parks; 2) the embrace of permanent stasis as a goal of preservation; and 3) the idealization of nature as exclusive of human habitation or use; These themes weave in and out of the agency’s history, at times becoming more predominant, at other times less, but never completely fading. They form a powerful ideological foundation for much of how the NPS conducts its business, and through land

4 acquisition, design, management and interpretation they become written into the park landscapes. The chapter then reviews some examples of the effect of these ideological themes on landscapes, focusing particularly on parks established in places with existing communities already in residence, and the agency’s policies for the treatment of historic resources in general. Even when the NPS attempts to manage places that do not match the idealized park image, the strength of the underlying ideological themes implicit in management policies and guidelines functions to gradually reshape the appearance and structure of the parks to both reflect and reproduce the romanticized ideal. Based on landscape and preservation theory and the historical evidence of these ideological themes, this dissertation then tests the following hypothesis: once cultural landscapes are preserved and managed by the NPS, they will tend to move from a local, working, and cultural landscape toward an increasingly nationalized, arrested, and natural landscape. Hence existing NPS methods of preserving working landscapes are likely to fail from the perspective of the local residents, who find themselves trapped in, or edged out of, the arrested, national nature-scape the NPS persistently creates. To test this hypothesis, Chapter Four presents an in-depth case study that identifies the actual changes that have occurred in one particular park since the NPS became involved with its preservation and management. Preliminary research identified a number of park units where the NPS has confronted the presence of existing human settlements within park boundaries. Historically the agency response to this issue has varied greatly. The early approach is exemplified by Shenandoah National Park (established 1935), where the NPS acquired nearly all of the private lands via condemnation and moved the residents out of the park.6 In contrast, the other end of the spectrum involves the recent creation of “virtual parks,” such as Ebey’s Landing National Historic Reserve (established 1978), with little if any

6 Darwin Lambert, The Undying Past of Shenandoah National Park (1989).

5 NPS acquisition of privately held lands, only adding an overlay of NPS management and regulation to the existing landscape.7 Overall, parks within this continuum vary in a number of key variables that influence NPS policy: date established, with associated historical and administrative context; type of unit (i.e. National Park, River, Recreation Area, etc.); and land tenure arrangements.8 For the purpose of this dissertation I have focused in-depth on a single case study, Point Reyes National Seashore (PRNS). A potential criticism is that the Seashore may not be representative, that it could be an isolated case. However, historical material from Chapter 3 on the establishment of other parks that initially contained communities suggests that the reshaping process documented here at Point Reyes is not unusual. Furthermore, PRNS represents a midpoint or “average” unit in the NPS system: it was established in the 1960s, at a time when the NPS was attempting new models of park acquisition and management, and long ago enough to have accumulated a distinct trend in NPS effects on the landscape. It is not a park initially intended to only protect nature, nor was it created to only commemorate history. The NPS acquired full land title yet retained the residents within its boundaries, at least initially. Hence its landscape represents an intriguing blend of natural and cultural resources, and so it provides a good baseline from which to compare other parks in future study. PRNS was established in Western Marin County, twenty-two miles north of San Francisco, California, in 1962.9 (Figure 1.1) In the initial years of the park’s existence the NPS bought private dairy and beef ranches within the park boundaries, and then

7 Laura McKinley, An Unbroken Historical Record: Ebey's Landing National Historical Reserve Administrative History (1993). 8 The National Park System has a wide multiplicity of designations for different park units, including national parks, monuments, battlefields, seashores, historic sites, and so on. National parks are generally the largest and most exclusively natural areas; national recreation areas and national seashores generally allow more permissive development and use. See Barry Mackintosh, The National Parks: Shaping the System (1985). 9 Throughout this study, I often refer to Point Reyes National Seashore as a “park,” in the general sense of the word, an area set aside and protected for public use. The usage of this term should not be confused with the NPS’s term “National Park,” which refers to a particular type of NPS unit. Point Reyes is a National Seashore, originally established as a recreation-oriented area, and is specifically not a National Park, which would necessitate a different set of management policies.

6 leased them back to the previous owners under one of two different lease options. The motivation

Figure 1.1: Location map (from Livingston 1993).

8 for this retention of the local industry was apparently political, in order to gain local support for the park. If the dairies within the park had gone out of operation, residents feared the demise of the area’s dairy industry would follow.10 The ranchlands within the park are now considered a working cultural landscape, continuing the 150-year-old traditional land use of the peninsula. They operate according to certain restrictions that protect the scenic and historical character of the ranches and the overall landscape. This policy of purchasing the private lands but keeping the residents in place forms a compromise between complete public and complete private ownership. By examining park documents, interviewing NPS employees, and using current day observations of the material landscape (illustrated here with photographs), my research finds three distinct trends in landscape change that coincide with the three ideological themes identified in Chapter 3.

Figure 1.2: Sign at one of the entrances to the Seashore.

The first trend that this case study shows is a shift toward an increasingly nationalized and standardized landscape. Landscape theory suggests that the production

10 See John Hart, Farming on the Edge: Saving Family Farms in Marin County, California (1991).

9 of landscape will reflect existing power relations, via both intentional acts of control and more subtle, symbolic-level changes. Historically, the NPS has considered one of the central criteria of parks as having national significance, and so will reshape the landscape to emphasize those aspects that serve to unify people’s experience of both the place and themselves. Standardized policies established by a centralized agency contribute to all of the national parks being managed according to the same principles and guidelines. In addition, this kind of reshaping results from park design and infrastructure—adding visitor centers, picnic tables, interpretive displays, and so on—to make the park landscape comply with national standards and expectations. Indicators of this trend toward nationalization include: increasing percentage of NPS land ownership, rather than private holdings; tenure arrangements for remaining residents decreasing in flexibility over time; increasing numbers of buildings and other structures designed and built by the agency, along with added roads, signs, and other improvements; and the relationship between the park administration and its surrounding communities. These variables function to remove the park from the “ordinary” landscape and set it off as an official, recognizable National Seashore. The second shift is a movement from a working to an arrested, static landscape. Preservation is at essence a desire to hold things still, to prevent change, so an actively worked landscape appears threatening to those qualities that are being preserved. As a result of its historic development, the NPS is accustomed to managing its units as though they were completely static in meaning and structure, with one “authentic” historic appearance. Thus working cultural landscapes run entirely counter to most park personnel’s management experience and understanding. Also compliance with national criteria of historical significance, authenticity, and integrity prompts the NPS to emphasize cultural resources that best fit the requirements, and remove or neglect those that do not. As a result, intentionally or not, park staff tend to de-emphasize the role and importance of work in the landscape and move it toward the more familiar model of a

10 museum-like arrested scene. Variables that show this movement include: decreasing numbers of operating ranches; an increase in the number of historical buildings adaptively used by the park and a corresponding decrease in those actively utilized by residents; and interpretative materials that emphasize the distant past on the peninsula over the still-active present day culture. Finally, this study finds a movement in management and interpretation from focusing on cultural resources and meaning to increasingly emphasizing natural aspects of the landscape. This stems from both a traditional bias within the NPS toward monumental natural scenery, and a recent rise in concern and staff expertise in ecological sciences. Environmental history and landscape theory both show a tendency in Western cultures to understand nature as something that is exclusive of humans or culture, rather than in a dialectical relationship. The presence of people or their influences reduces the “purity” of nature, or its intactness, and degrades it—unless they are only visitors, or park managers. National parks have evolved as a central expression of that belief, especially as we link our national identity to natural icons. Hence NPS management is likely to prioritize natural elements over the cultural. This management emphasis is expressed through the following variables: higher proportions of park staff and budget dedicated to natural management and interpretation rather than cultural; an associated emphasis on natural resources in official policies for park management; little identification of cultural aspects of the landscape in interpretive materials, so that they remain relatively invisible to park visitors; and an overall decrease in the number of buildings and other structures remaining in the park landscape. It is important from the outset to ask, why does this trend of landscape change matter? If the Point Reyes peninsula increasingly reflects some idealized conception of what a national park ought to be, why should we care? One answer is historical: Point Reyes National Seashore was originally established to protect the area’s values for recreation, and Congressional intent at the time was very clearly in favor of retaining the

11 pastoral qualities of the landscape. The current trend of management is not achieving that original goal. But, one could argue, priorities have changed since then. This brings us to the second reason to pay attention to this trend: simply to be clear and specific about what effects NPS management is having on this place. There is nothing inherently wrong with reshaping a landscape to reflect values of nationalism, preservation, and environmentalism if that is the agency’s goal, but it should be made clear that such changes are happening, whether or not they are the intentions of the PRNS staff, and that they have important implications for the future of the park, its residents and surrounding communities, and the general visiting public interested in the area’s history and culture.

12 CHAPTER 2

Theories of Landscape and Preservation

I. Introduction

At its core, this project asks the basic question, what happens when an individual or group intentionally preserves a landscape? Preservation is common enough in many of today’s societies, but it is much more complex and contradictory than it first appears. Bringing preservation and landscape theory together, this chapter will show that what ends up being preserved is not the actual landscape as it was at the time of preservation, but those aspects of it that coincide with the values that preservationists seek to accentuate. Not preserved are the cultural uses and meanings that shaped the landscape in the first place; they are overlain or replaced by the social dynamic of preservation itself, which comes to be built into the landscape, both in physical shape and cultural meaning. This chapter is divided into two major sections that investigate the theoretical understanding of “landscape” and “preservation,” respectively. The first half addresses landscape theory in general, emphasizing two main points. First, landscapes are shaped in part by the social forces that occur within and around them, and similarly restructure those social forces. There is an ongoing interaction between people and the places they live in, work in, or otherwise relate to, in which the people change the landscape through their actions, and also their actions are limited or encouraged by the landscape’s physical and ecological characteristics. In particular, landscapes reflect power relations, as groups or individuals try to dominate or influence them according to their own needs or interests.

12 And because of this interactive relationship, landscapes are continually in flux, responding to shifts in people's activities and ideas, and likewise steering social change in certain directions. Second, this shaping and re-shaping process tends to “naturalize” or normalize the landscape’s appearance, including its inherent power relations, causing the landscape to appear to be biologically and politically neutral, without having been made or produced in any way. A classic example is New York City’s Central Park, which consists of former farmlands, illegal shack settlements, and swamps completely engineered and designed to appear to be a wild park of forests and meadows, connected by winding trails. Many people are surprised to learn that the apparently “natural” features of the landscape were so intentionally placed and artificially maintained, because the overall effect is one of unchanging natural scenery—despite the park’s location in the middle of one of the largest cities in the world, and the prior existence of farms in the area. In addition, the rules for use of the park, such as restrictions on organized sports or loud gatherings, are based on the ideals of the original designer, Frederick Law Olmstead, who believed the park should be a place of quiet contemplation rather than rowdy crowds. These ideals are still maintained and reinforced by park management, signs, and law enforcement, creating the impression that this place ought to be one of quiet natural scenery, and that must be strictly protected if it is to endure. As a result, the social ideas and values that shape landscapes often appear as unquestionable parts of reality that are taken for granted, rather than human-created dynamics that could be altered or improved upon. This quality not only obscures the socially constructed origins of the landscape, but also maintains the power relationships that control it. Understanding the previous two points is crucial to unraveling the ways in which landscapes can shift—both in their physical appearance and in their cultural meaning— when they themselves become the objects of preservation. Preservation is one form that the control or direction of a landscape can take; thus the second half of this chapter

13 discusses preservation theory, revealing the idea of preserving landscapes to be somewhat of an oxymoron. Preservation is inherently the act of holding something still, protecting it from forces of change through time, and this runs entirely counter to the dynamic, changing nature of landscapes. There are a number of different motivations for preservation, which will be briefly reviewed here; most of these involve an idealization of the resource in question, whether it is the historical past, a present-day cultural system, or a natural resource or ecosystem—or a combination of all three in a landscape. These resources may be idealized for aesthetic reasons, or because they contribute to some group’s sense of identity or heritage. They may also be preserved as examples of natural or cultural diversity, or in hopes of gaining knowledge or profit. These different motivations may result in different strategies or techniques of preservation, but in a core sense they all seek to prevent change, or at least to control the direction and degree of change in a resource. However, although preservation may appear to freeze things in time, in actuality preserved resources increasingly reflect the values and ideals of their preservers. Because preservation is an exertion of power, that power is reflected in and reinforced by the preserved resource, whether it is an ancient vase in a museum, a wild animal caged in a zoo, or a landscape preserved as a park. For example, the particular kinds of animals kept in a zoo reflect the interests of the institution itself; if the zoo wants to emphasize the diversity of life, many rare or unusual kinds of animals may be represented, while a zoo focused on entertaining the public may have more popular, familiar animals. Similarly, zoos may house species individually in cages, or mixed together in relatively open (though fenced) compounds; the latter suggests a greater concern for natural- seeming habitat, or for allowing interactions among the animals, even if the animals themselves may be harder to view as a result. No institution can display all kinds of animals, and many —insects, for instance, or rats—are usually not included, indirectly

14 conveying the message that these other species are less important, or less interesting. In these ways, the institution’s values are reflected in the act of preservation: the choice of creatures to display, how they are displayed, and the information provided about them. In addition, the ideas that guide preservation and the power that enforces it usually become “naturalized,” so that the methods and standards of preservation are seen as normal, predictable, and inevitable. This process changes our perception of the preserved resource to include those values or ideals interjected through the process of preservation itself. In our zoo example, many people would be surprised to see a display of domesticated dogs in a zoo, because we have become so trained to believe that they “naturally” do not belong there. This has nothing to do with the dogs themselves, or the public’s like or dislike of them, but is a reflection of the values of the zoo that has become so ingrained in our expectations that we no longer notice other alternatives. In the case of preserved landscapes, whatever previous cultural meanings or uses of the land existed gradually become overwritten with the distinctive imprint of the preserver's priorities and interests. Whatever elements of the former landscape that coincide with the values of the preserver will be retained or highlighted, while those aspects that conflict will be downplayed, neglected, or removed. Over time, the preserved landscape is remade to both reflect the ideas of the preserver and to naturalize, or normalize, the preservers’ control and influence over the landscape. Thus it is important for this dissertation to make this reshaping process in the national parks more visible; as geographer Peter Jackson asserts, “recognizing the ideological dimension [of landscape] robs it of much of its power.”1 By doing so, this research can help to clarify landscape management goals and direction, and to reveal and prevent unintended consequences of management actions.

1 Peter Jackson, Maps of Meaning: An Introduction to Cultural Geography (1989), at 59. 15 II. Landscape As A Social Construct

If asked to imagine a landscape, many of us envision a view, perhaps of rolling hills or a mountain in the distance, or even a city skyline. Yet if asked to define that landscape, we quickly find that it is more than simply the physical earth itself. It almost invariably includes some degree of human influence—roads, houses, or any other man- made structure or modification to the land—and it also includes some element of personal and/or cultural meaning. Two visitors standing side by side at a Civil War battlefield site may “see” landscapes with different meanings, if one visitor’s ancestors fought for the Union while the other comes from a formerly Confederate family, or if one visitor is white and the other black. Similarly, a small town where you lived as a child will look very different to a tourist stopping to buy gas while passing through. What we experience as a landscape is a combination of what lies before us and what is in our heads; how we think and feel about what we see matters, and these issues in turn influence how we interpret, use and change what we see. Through constant reinterpretations and changes over time, landscapes gradually reflect the ideas and values of the people who live within its area. Thus a landscape can be thought of as the “unwitting autobiography” of those people, filled with cultural meanings that can be read, if you know what to look for.2 In a recent survey of the field, Paul Groth describes landscape as “the interaction of people and place: a social group and its spaces, particularly the spaces to which the group belongs and from which its members derive some part of their shared identity and meaning.”3 Because of this interactiveness, the landscape concept is an effective construct for analyzing the links

2 Peirce Lewis, “Axioms for Reading the Landscape: Some Guides to the American Scene,” in The Interpretation of Ordinary Landscapes, Donald W. Meinig, ed. (1973), at 12. 3 Paul Groth, “Frameworks for Landscape Study,” in Understanding Ordinary Landscapes, Paul Groth and Todd Bressi, eds. (1997), at 1. 16 between culture and the environment, particularly focusing on the visual and material details of the landscape as a tangible expression of culture.4 However, the meaning of the term landscape is often ambiguous. The term can be used to refer to the physical earth itself, the combination of natural and human elements, or it can mean a representation of a landscape, such as a photograph, painting, or description in a novel. Also, the physical landscape itself may be symbolic of cultural ideas, either local or more generally held. The interdisciplinary field of landscape theory attempts to clarify the meaning of the term, and identify the processes by which landscapes are shaped, experienced, and comprehended. This field covers a broad continuum of approaches, ranging from an emphasis on observation as the key to understanding a landscape’s single meaning, to a more interpretation-based approach to landscapes with multiple, overlapping meanings. Each end of this theoretical spectrum also has its own methodological implications (observation vs. interviews and interpretation of images or texts). This section will first sketch out these two extremes in the literature, so as to show that neither, alone, is adequate as a research tool or concept. Theories that instead reconcile the two extremes of the spectrum into a middle-ground synthesis provide a more useful foundation from which to illuminate the two key points for my work, that landscapes are socially produced, and that they naturalize social/power relations. Drawing on these theories also suggests the methodological approach for this project, highlighting the importance of examining the physical landscape not only through observation, but also through understanding its historical context and associated social relations via interviews and archival data.

4 Lester Rowntree, “The Cultural Landscape Concept in American Human Geography,” in Concepts for Human Geography, Carville Earle, Kent Mathewson, and Martin Kenzer, eds. (1996), at 133. 17 A. The Sauerian and Jacksonian Landscape

The academic use of the term landscape is rooted in the work of Carl O. Sauer, who established the prominence of the Berkeley School of Geography in the 1920s and ‘30s.5 Sauer emphasized landscape as the fundamental unit of geographic study, including a European (particularly German) conception of humans as active agents in environmental transformation; this was in direct opposition to the popular ideas at the time of environmental determinism. Drawing on the work of George Perkins Marsh, Sauer’s research focused on the ecological consequences of human settlement, revealing “man’s role in changing, intentionally or unintentionally, the face of the earth in

directions determined by his immediate needs.”6 He regarded all landscape as being composed of two components, the physical and biological elements of a site, and the human-created cultural expressions therein: “namely, as the impress of the works of man upon the area.”7 Thus landscape referred to “an area made up of a distinct association of forms, both physical and cultural”—a whole greater than merely the sum of its parts, and subject to development and change.8 For Sauer, the main methodological avenue for understanding landscapes was direct observation. In his 1956 presidential address to the Association of American Geographers, he asserted that “the geographic bent rests on seeing and thinking about

what is in the landscape,” trying to “register both detail and composition of the scene.”9 An objective, scientific description of universal meaning could be read from the landscape by observing its morphology or shape, consisting of the various physical and cultural forms and their relation to one another. Sauer was particularly interested in

5 See Land and Life: A Selection From the Writings of Carl Ortwin Sauer, John Leighly, ed. (1963), particularly “The Morphology of Landscape” (1925), “Forward to Historical Geography” (1941), and “The Education of a Geographer” (1956). 6 John Leighly, “Introduction,” Land And Life, at 4. 7 Sauer, “The Morphology of Landscape,” at 326. 8 Ibid. at 321. 9 Sauer, 1956. “The Education of a Geographer,” at 392. 18 observing aspects of daily life, especially dwellings, from which he would “read” and categorize the structural elements of the landscape into developmental sequences. By classifying landscapes in this way, geographers could compare cultural systems in relation to each other, or reconstruct past cultural development, expressing the “catalytic relation of civilized man to area” and the effects of different cultures on the natural world.10 This emphasis on the immediately visual, that which can be easily observed by a passer-by, was continued in the work of John Brinckerhoff Jackson. While largely self- trained as a geographer, Jackson’s establishment of Landscape in 1951, which he intended as a magazine for “the intelligent layman” to complement work done by

academic geographers, revitalized interest in the concept.11 In contrast to Sauer, Jackson’s emphasis was not investigating the ecological consequences of particular kinds of human-shaped landscapes, but rather looking to the common, vernacular American landscape to speculate about the social meaning of how people shape their lived-in surroundings.12 In the preface to his collection, Discovering the Vernacular Landscape, Jackson wrote: Over and over again I have said that the commonplace aspects of the contemporary landscape, the streets and houses and fields and places of work, could teach us a great deal not only about American history and

American society but about ourselves and how we relate to the world. It is a matter of learning how to see.13

10 Sauer, “The Morphology of Landscape,” at 343. He also felt geographers had a moral responsibility to study human behavior and its effects for good or evil on the landscape, as a way of determining the “right” way for societies to interact with their environments. See “The Education of a Geographer,” at 404. 11 Despite Sauer’s prominence at the time in American geography, his landscape concept fell victim to criticism from his peers. In particular, Richard Hartshorne charged that landscape had “little or no value as a technical or scientific term,” as it was too subjective in content and ambiguous in meaning. See generally J. N. Entrikin and S. D. Brunn, eds., Reflections on Richard Hartshorne’s The Nature of Geography, (1989). The idea fell into disuse until Jackson picked it up again with his publication. For more detail on Jackson’s background, see Paul Groth, “J. B. Jackson and Geography,” The Geographical Review 88(4):iii-vi (1998). 12 Rowntree (1996), at 135. 13 J. B. Jackson, “Preface,” in Discovering the Vernacular Landscape (1984), at ix. 19 This ability to see was crucial to Jackson's work. Like Sauer, Jackson relied on direct observation of human environments, again particularly focusing on dwellings and daily life, although he was equally interested in urban and rural places. Other cultural geographers have since taken a similar approach to studying landscapes, asking how particular cultural configurations have shaped spatial processes and structures.14 However, this approach tends to imply that only a single objective meaning can be found in any particular landscape. In this way, Jackson continues the theme from Sauer: landscapes represent single, uncontested meanings that can be easily understood primarily from observation.15 Sauer sought to categorize generalized landscape types, distilled from observation of individual scenes, representing a “generic meaning.” He acknowledged that each particular landscape had unique qualities in its interrelations with other systems or landscapes, but flatly stated that “a definition of landscape as singular, unorganized, or unrelated has no scientific value.”16 Similarly, Jackson tended to eschew descriptions of specific case studies in favor of more generic interpretations of landscape elements. For example, in his well-known essay “The Westward Moving House,” Jackson used three fictional families placed in different historical periods to document the changing relationships of the families to the land, and to each other, through the “medium” of the house itself.17 His style has been described as being “all assertion and argument, nothing is documented or formally demonstrated; much is

observed, nothing is measured,” prompting criticism that he merely evoked impressions of the landscape, rather than getting at the actual meanings to the people living within them.18

14 Some examples include Wilbur Zelinsky, The Cultural Geography of the United States (1973); Donald W. Meinig, “American Wests: Preface to a Geographical Introduction,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 62:159-184 (1972); and Peirce Lewis, New Orleans: The Making of an Urban Landscape (1976). 15 Although both Jackson and Sauer also did extensive reading and study of textual sources where available, both prior to observation and in cycles afterwards. 16 Sauer, “The Morphology of Landscape,” at 322. 17 J. B. Jackson, “The Westward Moving House,” Landscape 2(3):8-21 (1953). 18 Donald W. Meinig, “Reading the Landscape: An Appreciation of W. G. Hoskins and J. B. Jackson,” in The Interpretation of Ordinary Landscapes, Donald W. Meinig, ed. (1973), at 229. 20 Yet, as educated professors and outside observers, Sauer and Jackson’s interpretations of landscape meaning did not necessarily have any relation to how the local inhabitants actually see and experience their own places. Nor could their work touch on aspects of the landscape that may be hidden from public view. Instead they provided singular visions of landscapes, with their own elite point of view defined as objective and absolute. This emphasis on scientific observation continues with some researchers today; Peirce Lewis, discussing conflicting explanations of American building styles, writes: "The most immediate way to resolve such disagreement is to go back to the real thing (in this case, the house itself). The chances are excellent that part,

if not all, of the difficulty can be cleared up by visible evidence."19 This implies that the material reality of the landscape is the most important source of evidence for fully understanding its social meaning. Anything with purely local meaning or non-material form is lost to the researcher taking this approach. Furthermore, a major fault of this kind of approach is its lack of emphasis on the process by which culture develops in relation to the landscape. Sauer in particular emphasized landscape morphology at the expense of the actual process of development, and tended to treat history as a sequence of ad hoc events.20 In addition, Sauer did not have great concern for the individual’s experience of landscape, but rather adopted a superorganic understanding of culture, based on the work of early anthropologists Alfred

Kroeber and Robert Lowie. In 1941 he wrote that, “Human geography, unlike psychology and history, is a science that has nothing to do with individuals but only with human institutions, or cultures.”21 This view portrayed culture as almost completely independent from individual members of society, as if it exists on a different level altogether, while individuals are merely passive recipients of cultural forces. For Sauer,

19 Lewis (1979), at 27. 20 Neil Smith, “Geography As Museum: Private History and Conservative Idealism in The Nature of Geography,” in Reflections on Richard Hartshorne’s The Nature of Geography, J. N. Entrikin and S. D. Brunn, eds. (1989), at 108. 21 Sauer, "Forward to Historical Geography," in Land and Life, at 358. 21 culture wielded the power that created change: “Culture is the agent, the natural area is the medium, the cultural landscape is the result.”22 The danger of this view, as James Duncan pointed out in his classic criticism, is that “to the extent that cultural geographers take culture to be the determining force, other types of explanation do not appear necessary.”23 A superorganic version of culture removes all agency from individuals, rendering them meaningless except as conduits of the disembodied culture hovering in a plane entirely above them. As such, it leaves landscape theory “unnecessarily limited in the range of questions it can address and more importantly in the range of explanatory variables with which it can deal.”24

B. Representational Landscapes

In stark contrast, other landscape scholars have approached the topic from a completely different perspective, asserting that the meaning and function of landscapes are primarily experiential or symbolic, in need of interpretation by the researcher. Among those emphasizing the role of personal experience, generally termed the phenomenological school of thought, perhaps the best known is Yi-Fu Tuan, a Sauer- trained and Jackson-influenced geographer who added concepts from psychology and philosophy to investigate how people experience the world around them. His book Topophilia is a classic in the “sense of place” approach to environmental perception.25 Tuan has written specifically about landscape as an image, literally a mental and emotional construct, not the physical objects that comprise it.26 The visual elements of the landscape, existing only “in the mind’s eye,” become interwoven with individual

22 Ibid. at 343. 23 James S. Duncan, “The Superorganic in American Cultural Geography,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 70(2):181-198 (1980), at 191. 24 Ibid. at 198. 25 Yi-Fu Tuan, Topophilia: A Study of Environmental Perception, Attitudes, and Values (1974). 26 Yi-Fu Tuan, “Thought and Landscape: The Eye and the Mind’s Eye,” in The Interpretation of Ordinary Landscapes, Donald W. Meinig, ed. (1979). 22 relations and values to create a unique personal experience. In a similar vein, anthropologist Tim Ingold defines landscape as “the world as it is known to those who dwell therein,” stressing that a place’s character stems from “the experiences it affords to those who spend time there.”27 Yet this approach is no more satisfactory than Sauer’s, in that it is limited by its fixation with the lived experience. Such a strong emphasis on personal, individual experience leaves little room for historical context, or explanations of shared group meaning and group landscape action. In addition, it requires the researcher to inject her/himself into the process of landscape analysis, for if landscapes are truly individual, unique experiences for each person, there is no way for a researcher to say anything concrete about them other than his/her own personal experience. Still other researchers increasingly have focused on the symbolic role of landscape. Stephen Daniels and Denis Cosgrove, working in the hermeneutic tradition of research as an interpretive process, describe the cultural significance of landscape as iconographic, a pictorial way of representing, structuring or symbolizing surroundings. They state that while physical landscapes do exist, they are “no more real, nor less

imaginary, than a landscape painting or poem.”28 Furthermore, art historian W.J.T. Mitchell asserts that these images must be understood as a kind of language; instead of providing a

transparent window on the world, images are now regarded as the sort of sign that presents a deceptive appearance of naturalness and transparence concealing an opaque, distorting, arbitrary mechanism of representation, a process of ideological mystification.29

27 Tim Ingold, “The Temporality of the Landscape,” World Archaeology 25(2):152-174 (1993), at 155. 28 Stephen Daniels and Denis Cosgrove, “Introduction: Iconography and Landscape,” in The Iconography of Landscape: Essays on the Symbolic Representation, Design and Use of Past Environments, Denis Cosgrove and Stephen Daniels, eds. (1988), at 1. 29 W. J. T. Mitchell, Iconology: Image, Text, Ideology (1986), at 2. 23 An emphasis on multivocality, on recognizing the multiple voices and points of view that are often not represented in landscapes, is part of the overall project of those researchers who describe themselves as postmodern. Much of this type of research is also based in methods of textual analysis and interpretation. The line between the hermeneutic geographers, such as Cosgrove and Daniels, and their more postmodern compatriots is not always clear, as both groups call for a broad attack on mimesis, i.e. the possibility of exact reflection of reality, and the attitudes that underlie it: This ‘natural attitude’ stems from the philosophers of the Enlightenment, for whom language and imagery appeared to be perfect, transparent media through which reality could be represented to understanding. However . . . the opacity of these media, it is argued, stems from the fact that there is no neutral, univocal, ‘visible world’ out there to match our vision

against.30 However, postmodern analysis seeks to be the more radical of the two views, seeking to “decenter the privileged sites from which representations emanate, notably Western, male intellectuals.”31 Postmodern researchers aim to focus attention on the ways in which imperial power is exerted through the landscape to maintain the dominant “gaze.” As an alternative, they hope to highlight underrepresented voices and oppositions to dominant strategies of power, often exploring the relations between landscape and constructions of

gender or ethnicity, and to ask whether researchers can really talk about anything but their own privileged point of view.32 A major criticism of the landscape-as-image approach, whether it is labeled hermeneutic or postmodern, is that it goes too far, leaving behind any connections to the substantive reality of landscape. In addition, there is a question as to whether this

30 James Duncan and David Ley, “Introduction: Representing the Place of Culture,” in Place/Culture/Representation, James Duncan and David Ley, eds. (1993), at 4. 31 Ibid. at 7. 32 See, for example, the following works: W. J. T. Mitchell, ed. Landscape and Power, (1994); Gillian Rose, Feminism and Geography: The Limits of Geographical Knowledge (1993); and Dell Upton, “White and Black Landscapes in Eighteenth-Century Virginia,” Places 2(2):59-73 (1985). 24 exclusively symbolic approach to landscape might contribute to the “freezing” of landscapes into particular configurations. Because representations cannot completely reflect reality, looking at which aspects get included in landscape representation and which get left out can tip one off as to the power relations that are being asserted within the representation. However, landscape representation in any form, whether it be painting, literature or mapping, fixes that which is always in process. Having a representational focus necessarily looks at the world in an objective manner, from the point of view of an observer, and trains the emphasis onto that which is, not what is becoming. Important interactions that may be occurring within the landscape can only be alluded to with this kind of approach, and it runs the danger of re-creating landscapes as static and unchanging.

C. A Middle Ground

By themselves, each of the approaches described above are inadequate; they are like the five blind men trying to comprehend the elephant by investigating separate pieces of it, each getting their own aspect but missing the rest. Rather than subscribing to a particular extreme of landscape thought, this work draws most heavily on theorists who strike a middle ground between analysis of the physical, objective reality of the material world and the perception-based ideas of the symbolic landscape. Because both the physical form and appearance of the land itself and symbolic representations of the same are elements of human interaction with the spaces that surround us, incorporating a balance between both “ends” of this spectrum is essential when studying landscapes. The work of these “middle ground” theorists is organized here to emphasize the two aspects of landscape that are most crucial to this project: 1) landscapes are socially produced and reproduced, and are particularly reflective of power relations; and 2) landscapes tend to become “naturalized,” masking some of the social relations that shape

25 them while privileging others. I will also begin to draw in the NPS specifically to show how these theoretical ideas apply directly to their empirical situation.

1) Social Production of Landscape For the purposes of this dissertation, the most useful discussions of landscape draw attention to human actions that result in the constant, day-to-day manipulation, negotiation and contestation of landscape meanings. These researchers stress that the cultural meanings of landscapes, like the ecological relationships therein, are always in flux, and cannot be held static. Furthermore, a landscape cannot have a single, definite meaning or significance, because of the multiple perspectives and social circumstances that are brought to it. People are constantly engaging with and reworking the landscape, both physically and through symbolic representations, often as a means to direct or contest its role and meaning in their lives. As a tangible combination of the natural environment and its social, political, and historical context, landscape is “not so much artifact as in process of construction and reconstruction.”33 Even an area designated as a national park and protected in perpetuity continues to shift with such physical variables as changing management regimes or tourist densities, but also variables of meaning, such as whether the nation is at war or peace, whether neighboring communities feel enriched or limited by the park’s presence, and so on.

Henri Lefebvre, a French sociologist, in his discussion of the more general concept of space, asserts that every society creates its own historically-situated social spaces according to the needs for economic production and social reproduction within that society. Writing more or less within the Marxist tradition of historical materialism, Lefebvre’s theory centers on the ways in which abstract space—official, ordered, planned, and devoid of any social existence independent of visualization—is imposed

33 Barbara Bender, “Introduction: Landscape—Meaning and Action,” in Landscape: Politics and Perspective, Barbara Bender, ed. (1993), at 3; emphasis is mine. 26 upon and intersects with concrete space, i.e. the unofficial, vernacular, lived-in spaces of everyday lives.34 He describes all spaces, not just landscapes, as “object[s] intermediate between work and product, between nature and labor, between the realm of symbols and the realm of signs.”35 Taking a strictly material or strictly representational approach to the study of spaces is therefore not enough, because they include both. Lefebvre particularly criticizes the overly postmodern and post-structuralist philosophies that privilege the individual “knowledge” notion of space over the reality of social and physical space, instead focusing on a sense of balance, an articulation of the mental, or symbolic, and material realm.36 Specifically, Lefebvre insists that it is impossible to talk about ideology or power relations without referring to the specific spaces in which they operate, and which they create and recreate. The physical landscape is not just a passive stage on which people act out their lives, but a representational and symbolic space in which the dominant social order is materially inscribed and, by implication, legitimized. By way of example, Lefebvre asks whether religious ideology would be nearly as compelling “if it were not based on places and their names: church, confessional, alter, sanctuary, tabernacle? What would remain of the Church if there were no churches? The Christian ideology . . . has

created the spaces which guarantee that it endures.”37 In the same way, NPS management creates parks imbued with the agency’s historical ideologies; these places

then reproduce those same assumptions in both park visitors and managers, so that the parks simultaneously reflect and recreate particular perceptions and expectations about what a national park should be.

34 Derek Gregory describes Lefebvre as espousing a particularly Hegelian version of Marxist historical materialism; his book The Production of Space was first published in France in 1974 as a critique of Althusser's reading of Marx. See Gregory’s chapter titled “Modernity and the Production of Space,” in Geographical Imaginations (1994), for a more complete discussion of Lefebvre’s position within Marxism, especially in comparison to geographer David Harvey. 35 Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space (1991), at 83. 36 He argues that the theoretical reduction of space to codes, of “space itself to the status of a message, and the inhabiting of it to the status of a reading,” (emphasis in original) as evading both history and practice. Ibid. at 7. 37 Ibid. at 44. 27 Lefebvre also asserts that while everyday life is everywhere constrained and reshaped by capitalist and governmental forces/influences, it also contains traces of older, more traditional spatial practices that existed prior to the process of ideological reshaping.38 These traces represent the possibility of recovery from all of the ways in which modernity and capitalism alienate us from our own lives.39 This suggests one reason why “everyday” landscapes have become such recent targets of preservation efforts—because people are drawn to those traces as an alternative to increasingly modernized life—also why those efforts have troubling consequences. Lefebvre argues that forces of capital treat the everyday like a colonial territory, coming in and taking the bits and pieces that appeal to “modern life”—particularly through landscape planning and design, including parks management—while not paying attention to their effects on those

places and people colonized.40 Yet the existence of these traces also highlights that while landscape may serve to reinforce power relations, concrete space remains the site of active resistance and contestation going on; landscape is never only a symbolic manifestation of power.41 A number of landscape researchers have reached similar conclusions about the role of designed or official landscapes in particular as expressions or exertions of social power. Raymond Williams’ critique of landscape in English literature highlights the social implications of landscape imagery and form. In The Country and the City,

Williams mixes Marxist methodology with a cultural studies approach to English

38 Gregory (1994), at 363. 39 “It is in familiar things that the unknown—not the mysterious—is at its richest.” Henri Lefebvre, The Critique of Everyday Life (1991) at 132. 40 See Gregory at 403. 41 In a somewhat similar vein, architecture historian Dolores Hayden uses Lefebvre’s approach as “a framework for constructing some specific social histories of urban places.” In her work on Los Angeles, Hayden particularly explores the ways in which limiting access to space for certain groups based on gender, race and class serves to constrain the economic and political rights of those people, thus shaping their social reproduction. In addition, she analyzes “power struggles as they appear in the planning, design, construction, use, and demolition of typical buildings.” By bringing these histories to the fore, Hayden shows the urban cultural landscape as a reflection of the politics of the control of space, and also how groups manage to contest that power through the processes of living their daily lives to create unique “unofficial” spaces. See Dolores Hayden, The Power of Place: Urban Landscapes as Public History (1995), at 20, 30. 28 landscape literature, showing not only how people’s attitudes toward landscape contained ambiguities and contradictions, but also how those ideas were rooted in the actual material conditions of the country and the city.42 He asserts that social and political conditions in which people live both affect and are affected by what the people think and

feel.43 By showing how increasing industrialization of Britain in the 17th and 18th centuries converted pastoral life from a conventional existence to an idealized dream, and how the landscape, both in its physical reality and how it is portrayed in literature, came to reflect and reinforce these changing attitudes, Williams illustrates how interconnected the landscape is with the social context overlying it. Despite his less material focus, Cosgrove conceives of official landscapes as expressions of place and social life that specifically seek to stabilize conflicting views of which social orders ought to dominate, especially during periods of great social change.44 Drawing particularly on the history of landscape paintings, he suggests that landed classes in Renaissance Europe strengthened their hold on their property by ordering it and viewing it as a landscape.45 Geographer Jonathan Smith describes landscape as text, particularly as a communication of social status by privileged persons or groups, aiming to close or fix landscape meaning and to insulate it from “the disordering influence of multiple reinterpretations.”46 By creating aestheticized landscapes, privileged groups can

42 Raymond Williams, The Country and the City (1973). 43 This notion is in stark contrast to traditional Marxist thought, where the superstructure is entirely determined by the base; in Williams’ “structure of feeling,” the arrows of interaction go both ways. See Williams, Marxism and Literature (1977), for greater elaboration on his “structure of feeling” concept. It is important to note that Williams’ work tends to lack a sense of agency in how people negotiate the landscape. There is a disjuncture between the aesthetic experience of landscape and the physical experience, in that the changes taking place in the landscape limit the possible responses, yet there is little sense of how those responses then feed back into shaping the physical aspects or the social reinterpretations of the landscape. 44 Denis Cosgrove, “Prospect, Perspective and the Evolution of the Landscape Idea,” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 10:45-62 (1985). 45 Denis Cosgrove, Social Formation and Symbolic Landscape (1984). 46 Jonathan Smith, “The Lie That Blinds: Destabilizing the Text of Landscape,” in Place/Culture/Representation, James Duncan and David Ley, eds. (1993), at 80. Note that Smith relies primarily on literary references. 29 use their social power to present themselves within an idealized world, where physical and symbolic images of landscape serve to both express and create social inequity. This view is echoed by anthropologist Timothy Mitchell in his work on Egypt, characterizing European ways of knowing as rendering things as objects to be observed, to “set the world up as a picture . . . [and arrange] it before an audience as an object on display—to be viewed, investigated, and experienced.”47 This process of creating a “framework,” such as a landscape, through which the world is viewed puts the framer in the position of defining who or what is “in” or “out” of the picture; it also sets up the framework as something that “seemed to exist apart from, and prior to, the particular individuals or actions it enframed. Such a framework would appear, in other words, as

order itself . . . .”48 By epistemologically defining the world as a series of landscapes, those with power are able to define certain aspects of the world as important, while ignoring others, thus shaping and controlling which social relations may be expressed or reproduced. Through this kind of process, the NPS is able to define certain aspects of park landscapes as important, while overlooking or ignoring others, thus shaping and controlling which meanings may be expressed or reproduced.

2) Naturalizing Power Relations Official landscapes not only reflect power relations, but often function to

“naturalize” those relations, to make them appear unquestionable, taken-for-granted parts of reality, rather than social relations that could be altered or improved upon. The word landscape, like nature, culture, and nation, historically contains unspoken or unrecognized meanings that bolster the legitimacy of those who exercise power in society. These meanings can also, of course, be manipulated to create new power relationships. All four words, according to geographer Kenneth Olwig, “tend to be used

47 Timothy Mitchell, “The World As Exhibition,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 31:217-236 (1989), at 220. 48 Timothy Mitchell, Colonizing Egypt (1988), at 14. 30 as if their meanings were unambiguous and God-given, thus ‘naturalizing’ the particular conception which remains hidden behind a given usage.”49 By freezing the constant shifting of social struggles into material form, landscapes “solidify social relations, making them seem natural and enduring.”50 Marxist and Hegelian theory separate the concept of nature into two categories: “first nature,” that which is original and pre-human, and “second nature,” human alterations that overlay and remake first nature. When second nature is confused with, or defined as, first nature, the human activities and intentions that produced it become veiled, blending into the primordialness of first nature. For example, William Cronon describes the rhetoric in the early days of Chicago’s history as merging second nature with first, so that the artificially constructed railroad was seen as “no less inevitable, no

less ‘natural,’ than the lakes and rivers with which it competed.”51 The significance of this, as described by Noel Castree, is that the knowledge of universalized, “natural” objects is always political; that which is natural is “‘fixed’ in specific ways from particular perspectives and with particular implications for how we might behave toward ‘it’ and each other.”52 Yet because it is defined as natural, those political associations and exertions in the landscape are disguised and made to appear as elemental as the rocks and trees found there. Several landscape scholars have shown how powerful social actors obscure their

actions by associating second-nature manipulations of landscapes with primordial first- nature. For example, Kenneth Olwig shows how sixteenth-century courts in northern Europe redefined traditional conceptions of custom and law by creating popular presentations of landscape scenery, both in artistic works, such as paintings and theater,

49 Kenneth R. Olwig, “Sexual Cosmology: Nation and Landscape at the Conceptual Interstices of Nature and Culture; or What Does Landscape Really Mean?” in Landscape: Politics and Perspective, Barbara Bender, ed. (1993), at 307. 50 Don Mitchell, The Lie of the Land: Migrant Workers and the California Landscape (1996), at 28. 51 William Cronon, “Rails and Water,” in Nature’s Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West (1991), at 72. 52 Noel Castree, "The Nature of Produced Nature: Materiality and Knowledge Construction in Marxism," Antipode 27(1):12-48 (1995), at 15. 31 and in the physical landscape, with formal gardens and estates. These efforts, which emphasized geometry and spatial aesthetics according to the idealized past of imperial Rome, created “‘natural’ surroundings while simultaneously erasing the memory of custom’s common landscape which stood in the way of gentry ‘improvement’.”53 An associated assertion of “natural law,” as opposed to traditional customary law, was construed as “universal and opposed to the particularity of convention.” The new systems of natural laws, including conceptions of private property ownership which carried no feudal obligations, and aestheticized landscapes worked in concert to disguise the change in political power and make it appear “natural.”54 Similarly, NPS management reshapes local landscapes into “parkscapes,” driving the older appearance and meaning out of local memory—understanding of the place as a “park” overtakes all previous understandings, even for the locals. Similarly, discussing the eighteenth-century development of private parks in Britain, Williams finds the intent was to “make Nature move to an arranged design . . . [as an] expression of control and command.” The existence of the estates depended on the working agricultural land around them for income to support the landowners, yet all traces of work and labor were removed from the estates themselves. These two separate landscapes remained connected, yet “in the one case the land was being organized for production, where tenants and labourers will work, while in the other case it was being organized for consumption—the view, the ordered proprietary repose, the prospect.”55 The owners and designers of these park landscapes aimed to make the scenes appear unworked and “natural,” thus mystifying their origins as the productions of particular social relations.

53 Kenneth R. Olwig, “Recovering the Substantive Nature of Landscape” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 86(4):630-653 (1996), at 640. 54 Also the geometric formations used in landscaping were associated with the Roman grid and idea of “possessio”; these “lent legitimacy to the ideological transformation of lands into private property.” Ibid. at 638. 55 Williams (1973), at 124-125. 32 A more recent but equally powerful illustration of this kind of naturalizing force is found in Don Mitchell’s work on Californian industrialized agricultural landscapes. He uses Lefebvre’s theory to understand how both material and representational aspects of the landscape are manipulated to alienate migrant workers from the products of their own labor. He contrasts aesthetic representations, such as iconic photographs and posters, of the Central Valley agricultural fields, as a golden land where families might realize the American dream, with the ugly, violent, dirty landscape of the workers’ everyday lives, which produces and maintains the aesthetic view, yet remains invisible to it. As a more material example, Mitchell details the ways in which labor camps, the landscapes in which the workers lived their daily lives, in the 1910s were reconfigured to reduce threats of labor organizing and rebellion by closing off certain forms of activity and behavior. These reconfigurations, characterized by Mitchell as “benevolent repression,” mostly took the form of reducing disorder or irregularities in the layout and maintenance of the camps, instituting standardized levels of sanitation, and increased inspections of camps to prevent any radical organizing efforts. These changes tinkered with minor aspects of the workers’ environment, intending to make their lives more “content,” rather than actually changing the political and economic structure in which they toiled so as to give them greater control over their own lives.56 His work stresses that, “Apart from knowing the struggles that went into its making (along with the struggles to which it gave rise), one cannot know a landscape except at some ideal level, which has the effect of reproducing, rather than analyzing or challenging, the relations of power that work to mask its function.”57 As we will see in the next chapter, the NPS has developed ideologically with an ideal of what a park ought to be like, and as reconfigured park landscapes through management and interpretation so as to perpetuate that ideal.

56 See particularly Chapters 2 and 3 in D. Mitchell (1996). 57 D. Mitchell (1996), at 33; emphasis is mine. 33 In summary, this middle ground of landscape theory raises two key points that can be applied to the NPS and its relationship with people dwelling within protected areas: (1) Landscapes are dynamic, living places where nature and culture intersect; the particular characteristics of landscapes both reflect and reshape social forces. Particularly they reflect power relations, as one group actively tries to dominate the landscape or shape it according to its own vision or needs. (2) The process of framing an area as a landscape tends to “naturalize” its characteristics (including the inherent power relations), to cause them to appear to have simply occurred, in a biologically and politically neutral fashion, without having been made or produced in any way. “By becoming part of the everyday, the taken-for-granted . . . the [official] landscape masks the artifice and

ideological nature of its form and content.”58 Because landscapes involve not only visible characteristics but less tangible social meanings, research involving landscapes should include both physical observation of landscape characteristics and more interpretive methods, such as interviews, analysis of historical material and interpretation of landscape representations. Landscapes and their meanings are always changing, so research should attempt to address as wide a range of these natural and cultural interactions as possible.

III. Preservation

Having established definitions of what a landscape is, the second section of this chapter will investigate the question of what it means to preserve one. This is of

58 James S. Duncan, The City as Text: The Politics of Landscape Interpretation in the Kandyan Kingdom (1990), at 19. 34 particular concern because preservation generally involves attempting to prevent change in the resource in question, at whatever scale, in perpetuity. This goal is immediately problematic when discussing landscapes, as it is inherently contradictory to recognizing them as dynamic natural and social expressions. And, as this section will reveal, it is a goal that cannot be met, as the process of preservation itself necessarily changes the resource to reflect the ideas and values of the preserver. Geographer David Lowenthal identifies this fundamental problem that we can never quite bring the past back “as it was”; it can only be seen and comprehended through the lens of the present. Any explanation, interpretation, or preservation of history is overlain with a veneer of how we

see and think about things now.59 Furthermore, it is a selective view of the past, editing out aspects that do not match the expectations of the present. In particular, preservation tends to idealize the resource, and then naturalizes that ideal form so that alternative explanations, forms, or interpretations are overlooked. In this way, preserved resources function much in the way that official landscapes do, masking the social forces that strive to hold them still even as those same forces reconfigure their appearance and meaning. This section will look theoretically at our relationship with the past. As a way to start delving into this issue, it is useful to ask what is meant by preservation, and its usual target, heritage. It will then review three specific motivations for undertaking preservation projects: to represent or augment cultural identity, to protect local diversity, or to reap economic benefits. Understanding these motivations is important, because they represent the ideas those controlling the project seek to emphasize, and will thus steer the project in different directions. A museum given the goal of bolstering unified American cultural identity may present a completely different version of the historical record regarding US/Indian relations than that of a museum emphasizing Native American diversity and autonomy. The basic facts of history may the same, but the

59 David Lowenthal, The Past Is A Foreign Country (1985), at xviii. He also nudges his readers to notice how quickly history texts become out of date; clearly our present-day understanding of history goes though dramatic changes as we learn new things or see things from a different perspective [at 362]. 35 motivations for preservation place a distinctive veneer over them, according to the interests of the preservers in control. In addition, this section will explore the ways in which the process of preservation idealizes the resources in question, creating an all-too-perfect image of the past that gets in the way of understanding it. This often-simplified version leaves out elements that do not measure up to the ideal, often running along, class, ethnicity or gender lines, as the more powerful exclude others from their view of heritage. All of these aspects of preservation that alter the preserved resource also serve to naturalize the assumptions and values that inform the preservers’ choices. Once history has been told from on particular perspective, for instance, it can be very difficult to persuade people that other interpretations are equally possible or true. The overwhelming emphasis on preserving unchanging artifacts often leads to a stifling of the options considered possible, as the version preserved becomes naturalized into people’s expectations as normal and true. Understanding the dynamics of preservation is particularly important to this project, because the NPS has positioned itself as “the preservation agency” within the U.S. government. The U.S. Forest Service historically competed with the NPS for lands to own and manage. By aligning itself specifically as the “preservation agency,” in contrast to the Forest Service’s utilitarian philosophy, the NPS created a unique role for itself in federal lands management. Yet this also resulted in the NPS institutionalizing the values of preservation as its own, so that the dynamics and effects described here are particularly pervasive in the NPS’s approach to landscape management.

A. Preserving Heritage, Preventing Change

36 Heritage is that which we inherit: the stories, meanings, and tangible evidence of the historical past that survive in the present.60 It can include buildings, furniture, pieces of art, myths, cultural traditions, even language itself. The natural world is also often referred to as the heritage of mankind; protection of biodiversity, wilderness, and other aspects of the environment have all been argued under the aegis of preserving our common heritage. In recent years the ranks of what is defined as heritage have changed markedly “from the elite and grand to the vernacular and everyday; from the remote to the recent; and from the material to the intangible.”61 Because heritage can include

62 almost anything, it becomes increasingly vulnerable to constant redefinition. However, the term heritage is still most often used today to refer to physical remains of history: tangible artifacts that can be clearly identified, dated, and scrutinized for their authenticity and historic integrity. Specifically which resources or historic remains deserve deliberate preservation, however, is an open question. For after all, if heritage is simply the remains passed down from history, why the need to preserve it? Preservation implies protecting something from harm, damage, or danger. For most of humankind’s existence, people generally either re-used old structures or ignored them, allowing them to fall into ruins, sometimes

disappearing entirely.63 The sixteenth century Renaissance movement in Europe, however, conceived of classical antiquities as desirable links to the great Greek and

Roman cultures, considered superior to the more recent history.64 This change coincides

60 David Lowenthal, Possessed by the Past: The Heritage Crusade and the Spoils of History (1996). 61 Lowenthal (1985), at 14. 62 As a specific example: “Those who drafted the National Heritage Act [UK] confess they ‘could no more define the national heritage than we could define, say, beauty or art . . . So we decided to let the national heritage define itself.’” Lowenthal (1985), at 37. Despite this, distinctions are usually made between natural and cultural heritage, and preservation efforts for each are almost always considered as distinctly separate concerns, although they actually share much in common. 63 Note that some things were deliberately preserved as part of burial rituals or tombs, going back thousands of years, and many specific objects with religious symbolism or meaning have been protected, but large-scale “preservation for preservation’s sake—because an object is old, regardless of its religious or aesthetic content,” is not seen in any ancient societies. E. R. Chamberlin, Preserving the Past (1979), at ix. 64 David Lowenthal, “Introduction,” in Our Past Before Us: Why Do We Save It?, David Lowenthal and Marcus Binney, eds. (1981), at 10. 37 with shifts in the political structure of Europe and the rise of nation-states, for which heritage became increasingly symbolic of national identities and differences.65 Emerging nations preferred to associate themselves with powerful empires from the ancient past rather than the intervening Dark Ages dominated by confusion and strife. This attitude grew into a widespread upper-class aesthetic in the eighteenth century, and greatly expanded in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It can be seen in architectural styles, art, and literature: the idealization of a “classical” aesthetic across much of Western culture. Because this developing interest in heritage put such a primary emphasis on material items, deliberate preservation became crucial as time and social change caused artifacts to fade or crumble, buildings to be replaced, and old ways of life to disappear. For those in power, for whom change was a threat, preservation formed an important way to reassert and protect relics symbolic of their social prestige and control. Fearful of losing tangible traces of their history, and thus their connections back to a preferred past, the elite of Western societies stockpiled museums with artifacts. Eventually, governments began passing preservation legislation in attempts to protect at

least some of the items.66 Heritage could then be visited and viewed by tourists, in museums or at official historic sites. This desire to prevent change makes a kind of intuitive sense: known objects and stable spatial configurations allow us to maneuver through our daily lives more easily.

Simply put, people often tend to want their surroundings to stay like they are now; we have a fundamental discomfort with change, preferring our world to be predictable and constant. Hence many forms of change, particularly those which are unexpected, make most people ill at ease.67 As a result we tend to try to fix things in both time and space,

65 See Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (1983), and Mircea Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion (1959). 66 Sax traces the beginnings of preservation as a state act to the French Revolution, as a way of stabilizing the sense of French culture during turbulent political times, in his article: “Heritage Preservation as a Public Duty: The Abbé Grégoire and the Origins of An Idea,” Michigan Law Review 88:1142-1169 (1990). 67 Peirce Lewis calls this “successful proxemics”—we become accustomed to certain dimensions of our living spaces, and so we don’t like them to change, as the new spaces or arrangements make us feel 38 as Kevin Lynch puts it: “Conservation easily transforms itself into conservatism, keeping things as they are: the present landscape, because we are used to looking at it, the existing customs, the current ecology.”68 Historical durability is often interpreted as a sign of worthiness, in the sense that “it lasted this long, it must be good.” While the future is murky and unknown, the past is usually thought of as tangible and clear, unalterable, providing a sense of stability, familiarity, and security. Thus it also appears to be one unbroken, uncomplicated chain of events, rather than a continually reworked narrative. Some writers suggest that as modern societies have increased the pace of change,

heritage preservation becomes increasingly popular.69 Particularly as processes of industrialization and capitalism have demanded greater mobility, places have become increasingly linked together, both by communication technologies between them, and by physical movement of people and goods through them. Satellite-connected television and phones, fax machines and global computer networks allow people to immediately gain images of places without actually being there. Similarly, frequent migration blurs our sense of connections to specific territories. This modern long-distance hyperconnectedness thus ironically revalidates and reconstitutes identification with place and the symbols of place, as people attempt to stabilize their sense of belonging in the chaotic world around them.70 As market forces render the past obsolete, or reconstruct it

into something more technologically advanced, many people turn to preserved heritage as symbolic of security and familiarity amongst all the baffling changes. Heritage and the past it represents become increasingly important in this kind of shifting world as tangible,

uncertain and uncomfortable. Lewis, “The Future of the Past: Our Clouded Vision of Historic Preservation,” Pioneer America 7(2):1-20 (1975), at 13. 68 Kevin Lynch, What Time Is This Place? (1972), at 105. 69 Although this perception of social upheaval as accelerating is not new; nearly everyone since French Revolution has complained of too-rapid change. Lowenthal (1996), at 7. 70 Michael J. Watts, "Space for Everything (A Commentary)", Cultural Anthropology 7(1): 115-129 (1992). 39 confirmable markers of place and meaning, and preserving heritage becomes a major form of controlling social meaning and structure in a chaotic, changing environment. Preserving material objects is not the only way to conserve a heritage. Lowenthal gives the example of the Ise Shinto temple in Japan, which every 20 years is disassembled and an exact replica rebuilt of similar materials. In this form of preservation, perpetuating the techniques of building and the ritual act of recreating matters more than the physical continuity of the structure.71 Similarly, the ancient White Horse of Uffington in England is “recreated” annually by scraping off grass growing over the chalk figure.72 Cultures that rely on oral traditions retain their sense of cultural heritage without any tangible evidence at all, but rather by retelling stories from the past. These and other traditional or “folk” ways of retaining heritage bring the past and present together, fused in a repeating, cyclical sense of custom in everyday life. Despite these alternatives, the most prevalent modern conception of history and heritage is as facts that are seemingly fixed and certain, verified by the existence of physical evidence. As Lowenthal puts it, “A past lacking tangible relics seems too tenuous to be credible . . . To be certain there was a past, we must see at least some of its

traces.”73 The trouble is, tangible material evidence only reveals a limited scope on history; anything that didn’t take material form can be left out. The high visibility and accessibility of relics, especially old buildings, tends to cause people to over-

emphasize—and over-estimate—the stability and homogeneity of the past.74 For example, places where many artifacts survive from one particular epoch, places Lowenthal calls “pickled in aspic,” can give the impression that time has “stood still,” that they are perfectly unchanged since the era they materially reflect, regardless of what the actual historical experience may have been. Often, places associated with generations

71 Lowenthal (1985), at 384 -- also described in Lynch (1972), Chapter 2. 72 Living things do this, too: cells constantly replace themselves, trees drop their leaves every year, our personalities may change radically over a lifetime yet we remain the same individual. 73 Lowenthal (1985), at 247. 74 Ibid. at 243. 40 of wealthy inhabitants keen to protect their own particular pasts that experience the fewest social upheavals; the interest and efforts of the elite keep social change and challenge out.75 In addition, material relics can’t tell their own stories, but require interpretation and explanation, adding another layer of present-day attitudes and values to the understanding of the past. While preservation reshapes the past according to the views of the present, this approach also serves to distance the past from the present, causing it to seem like a distinct, separate realm, rather than intimately connected with today: recognizing the past’s difference promotes its preservation, the act of preserving it makes that difference still more apparent.76 Lowenthal argues that particularly in the U.S. heritage is not permitted to coexist with the present; instead it is fenced off, “always in quotation marks and fancy dress,” and visited on special occasions, rather than an integrated part of everyday life.77 Setting aspects of the past off as national parks contributes to this separation, implying that history is something to be visited and viewed, rather than lived with day to day.

B. Motivations for Preservation

The saving, protecting and restoring of various types of heritage comes with many costs, in time, money and effort poured into protecting traces of the past; yet preservation keeps becoming more and more popular in most Western societies. In these efforts, the desirability of the past, and hence its need for protection, is often taken for granted. This may be due to a variety of motivations for undertaking a preservation project: the preservers may seek to unify a group’s identity, exemplify diversity, or produce

75 Gillian Tindall, The Fields Beneath: The History of One London Village (1980), at 116. Tindall writes, “Paradoxically, those places in which local ‘concern for the past’ is often so marked among successive generations of moneyed and leisured inhabitants, actually tell one less about the past as a whole . . . than do more ordinary, battered places.” 76 Lowenthal (1985), at xvii. 77 David Lowenthal, “The American Way of History,” Columbia University Forum 9:27-32 (1966). 41 economic benefits. Some of these goals may contradict each other, but they all give purpose and direction to the preservation effort. They also are likely to affect the appearance and meaning of the preserved resource, as they lie at the base of the values or interests the preservers seek to protect in perpetuity; they form the justification for asserting control over the past.

1) Group or National Identity People often preserve cultural heritage because it informs them of their past, where they came from and how they came to be the people that they are today. As John

Steinbeck wrote, “How will we know it’s us without our past?”78 Lewis refers to this impulse as “cultural memory,” the sense of roots, connection, and cultural continuity that heritage inspires. Again the focus is on physical relics in our surroundings that serve as “reminders— tangible, incessant reminders—of the kind of environment in which our forefathers worked and played and lived out their lives.”79 These reminders contribute to constructing present-day identity, from the individual level up to the national or even global scale. Historic buildings and traditional land uses often become symbolic of identity, as can the soil itself. Localities can be thought of as “the complex outcome of various economic and social layers of historical 'deposits' and it is these that form the basis for succeeding roles.”80 These historical deposits, represented by physical heritage remains, not only shape the locality, but the people who associate and identify themselves with that particular place. Yet identity is not as simple or singular as it might initially appear. Identity is complex, always changing according to changing circumstances, always in the process of becoming something new. It is always an incomplete process, because at no time can it be prevented from being transformed. Michael Watts describes identity as “a meeting

78 John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath (New York: Penguin Books edition, 1976), at 114. 79 Lewis (1975), “The Future of the Past,” at 8. 80 Marsden et al, Constructing the Countryside (1993), p. 132. 42 point that constitutes and continually reforms the subject so that he or she can act....”81 Trying to articulate identity at any given time is like taking a photograph of a horse at full gallop; it is a representation of the moment rather than of the entire process.82 Like landscapes, cultural identities are constantly being reconfigured, reinterpreted, and contested. Yet the tangibility of heritage emphasizes this perception of the stopped moment, time held still, giving any associations with identities a similar static impression. As actual places and localities (apparently) become ever more indistinct through processes of globalization and homogenization, the idea of culturally distinct places and concern for their preservation appears to be gaining increasing strength. Cultural identification with specific places can serve as an anchor for groups or communities

experiencing rapid change.83 Michel Foucault recognized that all territorial concepts imply the exercise of power; space was a specific sort of container of power, within which subjects could be socially controlled.84 Thus cultural identity can be used in political or power relations, as a way of establishing claims to given localities. Groups contesting for the same territory may point to their identification with the heritage therein as a way of establishing relevance, discrediting their opposition, or gaining public sympathy. In the nineteenth and especially the twentieth centuries, heritage has perhaps

taken on increasing importance as an expression of group merit, usually in the form of nationalism.85 In his classic book Imagined Communities, Benedict Anderson shows how shifts in European religious and political systems after the Renaissance and Reformation periods also changed the ways people apprehended the world, allowing

81 Watts (1992), at 124. 82 Michael Keith and Steve Pile, "Introduction, Part 2: The Politics of Place", in Place and the Politics of Identity, Michael Keith and Steve Pile, eds. (1993), at 28. 83 Akhil Gupta and James Ferguson, "Beyond Culture: Space, Identity, and the Politics of Difference", Cultural Anthropology 7(1):6-23 (1992), at 10-11. 84 Watts (1992), at 117. 85 Lowenthal (1996), at 194. 43 people to conceive of “the nation” as having a single identity or character.86 And as nation-states became increasingly associated with particular territories and borders, and as people in those nations began to think of themselves as distinctively unique, heritage became increasingly symbolic of these new collective identities.87 Legal scholar Carol Rose asserts that the first real judicial justification for preservation in the U.S. was based in this idea that “reminders of a common past can link us together in a national community.”88 This is seen in a court case from 1896, United States v. Gettysburg Electric Railway, in which the Federal government condemned privately owned land to establish a national battlefield memorial at Gettysburg.89 The text of the decision argues that not only can preservation have a purpose of fostering sense of community, but also that the place is what can convey this sense, that “visual surroundings work a political effect on our consciousness.”90 Thus heritage can be a powerful tool in controlling or asserting a particular cultural or political identity. This motivation has been particularly prevalent in the development of the NPS, as we will see in more detail in the next chapter.

86 Also see Eliade (1957) for greater discussion of this topic. The more ancient way of thinking linked the cosmological with history; history was not an endless cause-and-effect chain, but a sense of “a simultaneity of past and future in an instantaneous present” (Anderson 1983, at 30). Religious groups formed a common sense of identity not because of shared history, or shared territory, but through shared sacred languages and symbols. It is worth noting that these were communities that could be joined through learning (either voluntarily or by force) the sacred languages and stories. This contrasts with later nationalistic identities, which usually cannot be joined except through lengthy residence or other proofs of one’s loyalty. Understandings of time in Western cultures changed radically, particularly after the Reformation, when the newly-invented printing press began to disseminate Enlightenment ideas across Europe, to a more linear calendar-based sense of time and history. Time became discrete, measurable, and homogeneous, allowing a sense of community to form from simply moving together through empty time, even if the individuals sharing that group identity never meet. Anderson gives the example of newspapers as both symbolic of and contributing to this new conception of time: each newspaper contains a great number of completely unrelated stories, all collected together with no coherence except for the fact that they all happened at the same time; the date at the top of the page holds them together (at 33-36). At the same time the communities based on the older religions and sacred languages “gradually fragmented, pluralized and territorialized” (at 19). 87 Conceptions of national identity often converge with familial associations and metaphors; another common term for heritage is “patrimony.” Lowenthal points out the similarities between patriarch and patriot: “The king is a fond father, the populace his children, the country maternal, life a gift from mother nature.” Lowenthal (1996), at 58. 88 Carol Rose, “Preservation and Community: New Directions in the Law of Historic Preservation” Stanford Law Review 33:476-534 (1981), at 482. 89 United States v. Gettysburg Electric Railway, 160 U.S. 668, 681-83 (1896). 90 Rose (1981), at 483. 44

2) Protecting Diversity The nationalistic motivation for preservation contrasts with a more recent legislative and judicial focus on the contribution of heritage to a local sense of community. Peirce Lewis, with his focus on the built environment, refers to this trend as protecting environmental diversity, preservation as an antidote to the increasing homogeneity of our suburbs.91 Having distinctive local character, such as that provided by historic buildings or landscape arrangements, reminds people of where they are and how to navigate through their environments. Kevin Lynch stressed in his classic work Image of the City the importance of “not feeling lost” as a starting point for making cities visually “legible” or comprehendible to their occupants.92 Rose points out that the stated purpose of the 1966 National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA), following Lynch’s language, is to provide a “sense of orientation to the American people.”93 Preservation is now frequently defended as a community-building or reinforcing mechanism, strengthening the local “sense of place.” Related to the ideal of protecting local diversity is the idea of preserving things because of scarcity, both real and perceived. Whether the item in question is a rare species, an unusual style of building, or the last family-run farm in the state, many people will instinctively want to protect it so as to prevent the complete disappearance of its kind, and to retain a sense of diversity in the locale. Lewis notes that many unique cultural items (such as his example of the only elephant-shaped hotel south of the 40th parallel) actually tell us less about history or cultural dynamics than their more ordinary comrades, yet they often are the ones that serve as local landmarks, and would be most immediately missed were they gone.94 Certain attributes—the first, the largest, etc.—can

91 Lewis (1975), “Future of Past,” at 14-15. 92 Kevin Lynch, The Image of the City (1960). 93 Rose (1981), at 489. 94 Lewis (1979), at 19. 45 also distinguish an otherwise ordinary relic from its fellows, thus making it rarer and more worthy of protection. Preservation puts a protective roof over these scarce resources, ensuring that they never disappear entirely, lest they be forgotten or irrevocably lost. Similarly, protection of certain communities can be thought of as preserving scarce or rare cultural subgroups. Preserving the look and feel of communities, and/or associated “ways of life,” as pockets of cultural diversity, insulated from the homogenizing tendencies of the dominant culture, has come to be valued in most industrialized societies, resulting in special considerations for groups such as the Amish, Native American tribes, and even small rural communities based on “traditional

economies.”95 Protecting “ways of life” has increasingly become a concern as globalization brings McDonald’s to Russia and Asian noodle shops to the American Midwest. We rely on this kind of preservation to remind us of our differences, rather than to bind us together by emphasizing our apparent similarities. Yet one troubling question to this motivation for preservation is the thin line between protecting diversity and paternalistically “freezing” it. Is the community identity or appearance being preserved one that is self-defined, or is it being imposed from the outside? In some cases, the dominant culture may be “co-opting” the smaller ones and thus limiting their autonomy or ability to change according to self-definition.

Some community protection efforts reflect tolerance for subcultures only as long as they remain quaint and unchallenging to the values of the larger culture. For example, the Amish are protected because most Americans like their old-fashioned clothes and quaint customs; in contrast Mormons were not historically given similar treatment

95 These efforts also raise the problem of how to define a distinctive “community” that might warrant special protection? There is fairly strong agreement that groups like the Amish and Native American tribes qualify, but what about ethnic neighborhoods in cities? Or suburbs that simply don’t want additional growth? And even once a community is recognized as having some integrity as a distinctive group, what are the range of rights it can claim? Who should be recognized as “the voice” of the community in deciding how it wants to shape its future? How should differences of opinion within it be dealt with? And how much of a right does it have to squelch individuality for the sake of the protected community's stability? 46 because their traditions of polygamy were not acceptable to the larger American mainstream.96 Also, by rallying behind one particular definition of community heritage or identity, preservation intended to protect diversity can result in wiping out any local variation that may exist, fixing the place or group according to a single definition.97 This kind of standardization can alienate the locals from their own heritage, as Lowenthal reminds us: “From being central to life, minority heritage becomes a frill, an extra, an embellishment.”98 In some cases, too, the fears of homogenization may be overblown or misidentified. Joe Sax’s consideration of the case of Las Trampas, NM, reveals an attempt at preservation initiated in 1967 by “some people who wanted to protect a traditional Hispanic community against some of its own inclinations toward

modernization.”99 Yet the locals resisted the official involvement of the NPS in preserving their community, and in retrospect Sax found that their rural identity and community was still intact 20 years later, despite the lack of formal preservation.100 This case stands in contrast to other places that were protected by the NPS and “programmed to die,” gradually losing residents over time as the park’s purposes came to dominate the protected area.101 The larger question in this discussion is, who gets to define which communities are worthy of protection as unique and diverse cultural heritage? In the case of Poletown,

Michigan, an ethnic community within the city of Detroit, the neighborhood council

96 In Reynolds v. United States, 98 U.S. 145 (1878), the Supreme Court wrote that “there never has been a time in any State of the Union when polygamy has not been an offence against society, cognizable by the civil courts and punishable with more or less severity. In the face of all this evidence, it is impossible to believe that the constitutional guaranty of religious freedom was intended to prohibit legislation in respect to this most important feature of social life.” Yet in contrast see Wisconsin v. Yoder, 406 U.S. 205 (1972), in which the refusal of Amish parents to send their children to school past the 8th grade is upheld as a protection of the community’s religious freedom. 97 Lowenthal (1996), at 84. He also notes that, “Indiscriminate adoration is no less demeaning than aversion”; in other words, local heritage may gain popularity but often without any real understanding. 98 Ibid. at 85. 99 Joseph L. Sax, personal communication. 100 Joseph L. Sax, “The Trampas File,” Michigan Law Review 84(7):1388-1414 (1986). 101 Sax (1984), at 505. 47 asserted themselves as worthy of such consideration, but the courts did not agree.102 Sax notes that our current legal structure allows no opportunity to raise questions about the non-economic losses incurred when an established community is destroyed; there is no overarching legal doctrine or principle of community entitlements, nor even a definition.103 In addition, a problem can arise when people wish to “acquire” a past that perhaps isn’t their own; sometimes the old-timers in a community, who had more of a direct hand in its historic development, do not want preservation laws, but more recently arrived residents do. Similarly, there is a thin line between helping a community or cultural group protect itself and allowing it to be exclusionary in ways that are unfair or discriminatory, such as redlining. In general, whoever wields the most power—either within the community, or from outside—asserts the right to define “the community,” and that definition will usually serve some larger aim or goal of those with power. In the case of national parks, the NPS has often worked with powerful elites, such as John D. Rockefeller, to assert a particular definition of communities in and around parks, emphasizing particular aspects of the area’s human history that fit in with the NPS’s ideals while overlooking others.

3) Economic Gain People are also frequently motivated to preserve heritage by the promise of financial rewards; such as from increased property values, decreased tax burdens, or tourism. As heritage becomes ever more popular with the public, and particularly as aesthetic trends emphasize the desirability of age, more and more people are willing to pay a price to see, experience, or own the past. Peirce Lewis highlights this motivation to preserve history in order to draw tourists and high-end renters, and wonders about the social implications.104 When the past itself becomes a commodity, its content and

102 See Poletown Neighborhood Council v. City of Detroit, 410 Mich. 616, 304 N.W.2d 455 (1981). 103 Sax (1984), at 499. 104 Lewis (1975), “Future of Past,” at 16-18. 48 meanings become subject to whims of the market, again reshaping heritage into what might be more popular or sell better. Preserving for tourists tends to gentrify, clean things up, and push out the poor; in many cases this strategy can wipe out the cultural components that created or contributed to the place’s character in the first place. Rose particularly considers the displacement of low-income residents “the albatross of the modern historic preservation movement, evoking as it does the overtones of snobbery and special interest that have long dogged preservationists.”105 Economic motivation also can transform the past into an industry. In some instances of economic decline, particularly in communities that have relied on traditional extractive industries that are waning in popularity or value, changing to a service industry based on bringing in tourists interested in history is an appealing option. However, this runs the risk of turning the local area into a museum, using its past to market itself. Robert Hewison argues that this is becoming more common as people generally become less interested in the past for its own sake, but instead for what they can get out of it. “What has happened,” he writes, “is that the past has become a package, our social and cultural history a commodity.” And one result of that commodification of the past is that

“people also become a product.”106 This also brings up the legal question of who owns the added value that historic preservation can impart. If a private person or group protects or restores a historic house,

they clearly should reap any profits from it, but if historic zoning is put in place by a government action, should the individual who owns the protected property or object get the windfall, or does the public now in some sense “own” that value? The U.S. legal system views all property as essentially the same, but many people perceive a difference between private ownership and public “belonging”—the sense that cultural items somehow belong to some larger group. We seem to inherently understand this, but have

105 Rose (1981), at 478. 106 R. Hewison, “The Heritage Industry Revisited,” Museums Journal, April 1991:23-26, at 26. 49 no legal rules to implement it. The courts have clouded the question somewhat with cases like Penn Central Transportation Co. v. New York City, in which the owner of Penn Central Station was required to continue providing the public the benefit of the historically-intact building, rather than adding a skyscraper to the top of it.107 Traditionally the law only prevents harms, and doesn't require “good deeds”—so why is a preservation case treated differently? Rose notes that preservation is essentially a very open-ended and ambiguous process, meaning that “publicly supported historic preservation is singularly vulnerable to the charge of arbitrariness.”108

All of these differing motivations for preservation share one thing in common: they seek to protect specific values and ideas that heritage can represent. They also all exert influence over heritage’s form and meaning, preserving only the particular views of the past that support the interests of those directing the project. And in one form or another, they can all be found operating in the NPS’s actions to preserve parklands.

C. Idealizing the Past

In all forms of preservation, almost regardless of which motivation underlies them, there is a strong tendency to idealize the past, to make it representative of some imagined era of perfection, thus all the more worthy of preservation. The ways in which currently held values can be projected back onto history underlie this desire to see the past not as it actually was but as it should have been, according to how we see it today.109 The appealing sense of the past as being fixed and unchanging often leads to the idealization of our past as a golden age, the “good old days.” In the seventeenth century

107 Penn Central Transportation Co. v. New York City, 438 U.S. 104 (1978). 108 Rose (1981), at 477. 109 For example, an organization called the Society for Creative Anachronism that stages reenactments of medieval life describes its goal as “to recreate the Middle Ages not as it was but as it should have been, doing away with all the strife and pestilence.” Lowenthal (1985), at 363. 50 nostalgia was believed to be a genuine medical ailment afflicting those separated from their native land, making them literally “home-sick,” causing them to languish, waste away, or even perish.110 By the mid-twentieth century, however, nostalgia was only considered to be a state of mind, but one that affects most levels of society, characterized by a sense of rebellion against the present, mistrust of the future, and an increasing longing for a romanticized past.111 To Lowenthal, “the enormous popularity of reconstructed ‘landscapes that we never knew, but wish we had,’ suggests refusal to face up to the dilemmas of the present.”112 Also nostalgia functions to “pacify” the past, overlooking the very real anxieties, difficulties and dangers that the historical inhabitants

of that place actually felt.113 Nostalgic preservation of the past allows escape into an idealized yesterday, creating “scenes of unreality, places where we can briefly relive the golden age.”114 Historic remnants are often revered for their aesthetic values, viewing that which is old or ancient as beautiful or romantic.115 Lewis describes this motivation as preferring “antique texture”; we just like old buildings better than new ones.116 Lowenthal qualifies this, asserting that we tend to prefer “ancient” to “old” (i.e. the more remote the better): the past of our grandparents is charming, while the too-close past of our parents is only out-of-date.117 But this “lust for the ancient” can result in the sacrifice of more recent relics. The less-ancient past, or even still-living landscapes with

past and present functionally linked, may get bulldozed in favor of the emphasizing the more ancient past.

110 Ibid. at 10. 111 Lowenthal calls nostalgia as we know it now “memory with the pain removed.” Ibid. at 8. 112 Ibid. at 13, quoting Richard Riley. 113 R. Hewison (1991). 114 J. B. Jackson, The Necessity of Ruins, and Other Topics (1980), at 102. 115 “Aesthetic pleasure is the pleasure of anticipation, and therefore of imagination, not of accomplishment. . . To find something beautiful is, precisely, not yet to have finished with it, to think it has something further to offer.” Alexander Nehamas, “An Essay on Beauty and Judgment,” Three Penny Review Winter 2000, at 3. 116 Lewis (175), “Future of Past,” at 10. 117 Lowenthal (1985), at 51. 51 Similarly, aspects of history that are less aesthetically pleasing may be overlooked or cast aside in favor of more glamorous ones. This focus on protecting the most beautiful, grand, and elaborate artifacts also leads to once again seeing the past through a filter of class, as only the wealthy could afford to demand such beauty. In admiring the elegance of many antiques we tend to overlook the class implications of those items; to use real silverware or brass doorknobs on a daily basis usually requires poorly-paid servants to maintain them. By idealizing the aesthetics of the past, preservation tends to focus on the remnants of high culture only, ignoring that which was more common or unattractive, despite the fact that history does not differentiate between the good, the bad,

and the downright ugly.118 Of great concern in many preservation efforts is the authenticity of heritage; the meaning of this term, however, is unclear. In practice it has less to do with historic accuracy than adherence to an ideal conception of the past. The idea can be connected to Enlightenment-period science and ways of knowing—the idea that the world can be precisely and accurately known, that there is a single discernible truth to reality. When considering a piece of art, we appreciate and value the originality expressed in the art, hence the value for authenticity; forged masterpieces do not fetch the same market value as the real thing.119 But what are the implications when we extend this value to whole cultures, to nature, or to the past? Edward Bruner describes the “problem of authenticity” as being built into Western societies as “the notion of privileged original, a pure tradition, which exists in some prior time, from which everything now is a contemporary degradation.”120 This conception was particularly prevalent in the science of

118 Lewis (1975), “Future of Past,” at 11, 15. 119 Although this depends on being able to accurately differentiate the fakes from the genuine items, and sometimes a fake that has successfully tricked the experts takes on its own special value. In addition, we have the oddly oxymoronic “authentic reproductions,” those that are officially sanctioned by whoever owns the original or otherwise wields authority over its reproduction and sale. 120 Edward M. Bruner, “Epilogue: Creative Persona and the Problem of Authenticity,” in Creativity/Anthropology, Smadar Lavie, Kirin Narayan, and Renato Rosaldo, eds. (1993), at 324; emphasis in original. Note that this is the opposite of progress, an Edenic narrative where the original innocence is lost, and the rest of history is a constant struggle to re-attain that original state of perfection. 52 anthropology for decades, as researchers searched for “primitive” peoples and cultures, considered unchanged for eons and therefore more “pure.”121 When the focus is drawn too tightly on purity, authenticity, or pristineness, it tends to disempower or eliminate any non-pure elements—such as people in nature, or recent changes to historical scenes or artifacts. Thus preservation has a catch-22: we ideally expect to reveal the whole, pure, singular past, but we necessarily only have the fragments left over in the present—and the less complete they are, the less authentic and thus credible they seem. A recent example of this problem is found in Dydia DeLyser’s work on California’s Bodie State Park, an old mining town preserved in a state of “arrested

decay” since the 1950s.122 In her ethnographic research, DeLyser recorded visitors talking about how “authentic” Bodie seems, with its tumbling-down buildings, all weathered, faded, and lonesome. Often they contrasted it with the gaudy displays in nearby “restored” mining towns, such as Virginia City, Nevada, where the buildings were brightly painted and lit up, and entrepreneurs were always trying to sell them something. Yet ironically, when Bodie was still a functioning lived-in town, it was brightly painted and had loud saloons and restaurants; furthermore its existence was entirely about people trying to make money. So how can the preserved ghost town of Bodie be more “authentic” than Virginia City? It’s an authentic preservation of our idea of what a ghost town ought to be, not what the town actually was historically.123

It is important for this discussion to understand the link between authenticity and authority, as in, “who has the authority to authenticate, which is a matter of power—or,

121 Even today as ethnographers are trying to move away from this idea of a single “authentic” past or original state, tourism increasingly demands it, seeking it out world-wide. Ibid. at 324. 122 Dydia DeLyser, “Good, by God, We're Going to Bodie! Landscape and Social Memory in a California Ghost Town,” dissertation (1997). 123 This raises a somewhat related problem: how do you maintain authenticity? If the State Parks Dept. had just left Bodie alone, it would have fallen down completely long ago, the victim of time and harsh climate. Instead, under their policy of arrested decay, they use modern techniques and materials to keep the buildings in a perpetual state of “falling down but not all the way down.” How do we feel about Bodie’s authenticity when we know that these kinds of interventions are taking place? Most of the visitors DeLyser interviewed were untroubled by this actual discrepancy in the site’s authenticity, as long as the appearance of authenticity was maintained. 53 to put it another way, who has the right to tell the story of the site.”124 The authentic past is that which has been certified and made official. Bruner’s work at the reconstructed historic village at New Salem, Illinois, where Abraham Lincoln lived as a young man, reveals multiple definitions of authenticity, resulting in layers of contestation over the site’s “true” meaning: scholarly vs. popular views of Lincoln, its role as public park intended for recreation vs. a historic site with primarily educative purposes, and so on. These differences in the definition of authenticity show up as power struggles between the various parties involved in management and interpretation of the site. The assertion of authenticity is revealed to be unequivocally an assertion of control over the meaning of heritage, and the right or power to make that assertion. The NPS relies on very specific criteria for determining what historic resources are authentic, used to determine eligibility to be listed on the National Register of Historic Places; in this way, they control the aspects of the past that are included in the official story.

From this discussion, we have seen that preservation necessarily changes that which is preserved, overlaying it with a veneer of values and intentions from the present. Which motivations are behind a given preservation effort, however, matter greatly, as they each, in Lewis’ words, “carry with them a vision of the future when preservation will have succeeded.”125 This vision, asserted by those with social power, reshapes heritage to support their aims and values126. Meanwhile the idealization of age, aesthetics, or authenticity permeates almost all preservation efforts, further changing the past to reflect the ideals of the present. And all of these processes also naturalize those present-day interests and values, causing their influence on the past seem to disappear,

124 Edward M. Bruner, “Abraham Lincoln as Authentic Reproduction: A Critique of Postmodernism,” American Anthropologist 96(2):397-415 (1994), at 400. 125 Lewis (1975), “Future of Past,” at 20; emphasis in original. 126 Although heritage usually refers to historical remains, history and heritage can not be directly equated. Lowenthal makes this important distinction: “History explores and explains pasts grown ever more opaque over time; heritage clarifies pasts so as to infuse them with present purposes . . . History is the past that actually happened, heritage a partisan perversion, the past manipulated for some present aim . . . substituting an image of the past for its reality.” Lowenthal (1996), at xi, 102 54 taken for granted as part of the “true” history. These elements all are essential to recognize in the processes of landscape preservation, as a local area becomes reshaped not only according to political and social relations, but in specific ways that reflect these various motivations and tendencies.

55 IV. How Do Landscape and Preservation Theory Relate to the NPS?

J. B. Jackson, one of the greatest advocates of the importance of vernacular landscapes, was less enthusiastic when such places were preserved. He regarded protected landscapes of all kinds as being political, created by some formal legislative act to be stable or unchanging, rather than remaining in the true vernacular, as mobile, unpredictable and fluid. He was critical of both the environmental and historic preservation movements, asserting that their efforts result in seeing the landscape “less as a phenomenon, a space or collection of spaces, than as the setting of certain human activities.”127 In order to avoid reducing the landscape to mere backdrop, protected landscapes within parks, whether they are designated as natural or cultural landscapes, must be recognized as being produced, as being “political products and strategic spaces.”128 This is a crucial aspect to understanding any landscape, yet it is specifically this political, produced aspect that the NPS avoids acknowledging or addressing in their management. This approach to landscape insists on unveiling the power relations naturalized within the landscape so as to generate better understanding not only of how the landscape was made, but how those relations continue to interact with the landscape to maintain control over its meaning. While the landscape is never entirely stable, as it is always in a state of “becoming,” it is also constantly being represented as a fixed totality, in an effort (again either intentionally or inadvertently) to negate or erase those ongoing struggles over form and meaning. Hence, as stated by Don Mitchell, “landscape is thus an uneasy truce between the needs and desires of the people who live in it, and the desire of powerful social actors to represent the world as they assume it should be.”129

127 J. B. Jackson, “Preface” in Discovering the Vernacular Landscape (1984), at x. 128 Lefebvre (1991), at 83-84. 129 Ibid. at 34. 56 The emphasis on the reshaped aspect of preserved landscapes is echoed by Barbara Bender, who notes that ordinary, everyday people tend to be excluded by official protection and repackaging of landscapes. Discussing the British National Trust, Bender notes that “its main focus has been the landmarks of those with power and wealth, inscribed in an aesthetic, which, as it has done for centuries, bypasses the labor that created the wealth.”130 This raises the question, “preservation and presentation for whom?”131 Which places will be singled out for protection, and in what ways does protection modify their original appearance and meaning? Will they be places of production or consumption? Through its selection criteria and techniques of maintenance, management, and interpretation, the NPS places its imprint on the landscape, reshaping the protected area into a National Park, something with its own distinct meanings and implications. Yet the NPS does not recognize this process of creating a set of official landscapes, it naturalizes the process in its own right. The shift toward a designed, orderly “National Park-scape” is not noticed or questioned by the NPS managers, but accepted as “normal,” desirable and inevitable. Thus preserved landscapes, as they move from the realm of the vernacular to the official, often reveal less about the history of the place being protected than the preserver's perception of the past. Raymond Williams has asserted that “a working country is hardly ever a landscape. The very idea of landscape implies separation and observation”.132 However,

in the case of NPS-protected cultural landscapes, the history of the land as having been worked and inhabited is ostensibly what the Service is trying to preserve. Landscape can be both a work and an erasure of work; it is created through people’s labor in their daily lives, and yet the traces of their labor become increasingly invisible as management operates to make them disappear into the “natural,” taken-for-granted appearance of the park. Preservation of these places builds on the social production of the residents’ lives,

130 Bender (1993), “Stonehenge—Contested Landscapes,” at 269. 131 Ibid. at 271. 132 Williams (1973), at 120. 57 yet creates a new landscape that tends to diminish or eliminate their contributions to it, and reinterprets its significance according to the agency’s historical ideologies.

58 CHAPTER 3

Historical Development Of NPS Ideology

I. Introduction

Chapter Two tells us that a preserved landscape is a manipulated one, where the preferences and values of the preservers become built in to the landscape. So as to evaluate how NPS management might be reshaping landscapes, this chapter will both identify the agency’s institutional ideologies and analyze its general trends in the management of parks that include people and their history. The former will suggest the ideal toward which the NPS can be expected to reshape its landscapes, and the latter will reveal that it has indeed done so historically. Chapter Four will then take up these ideological themes and document their effect on one particular NPS landscape, Point Reyes National Seashore. The particular historical development of the NPS has resulted in a set of core values that underlie the agency’s management decisions. These ideological attitudes and political expectations are rooted in the earliest days of park establishment, and thread through the creation and development of the NPS since its beginning in 1916. They lie so deeply entrenched that NPS historian Richard Sellars has recently observed, “Given the strength and persistence of ancestral attitudes within the Service, its core values are likely to outlast any one director, even one who is stubbornly determined to change them.”1 My research reveals three major ideological themes, which developed

1 Richard West Sellars, Preserving Nature in the National Parks: A History (1997), at 290. He cites sociologist Edgar H. Schein, on how values of leadership become entrenched and eventually taken for granted and assumed, hence defining what types of later leadership are considered acceptable; at 40-50. 56 simultaneously to form a romanticized ideal for national parks, and which are essential to understanding the agency’s approach to cultural landscape preservation: 1) Nationalism and standardization as essential to creating “official” parks. The earliest U.S. national parks were created explicitly to bolster national pride and create a sense of heritage for a still-young country. Benedict Anderson calls this kind of nationality the formation of an “imagined community,” conceived of as deep horizontal comradeship and similarity, regardless of actual differences and inequities that may exist.2 Thus, the NPS institutionalized the national park idea as a symbol of American values. In addition, its standardized, one-size-fits-all approach to management has created a single centralized, nationally-consistent system of control and design, despite the national park units being very disparate places. This standardized system continues to reshape these places to reflect national meanings and aesthetic preferences. 2) Parks idealized as natural landscapes exclusive of human habitation or use. Work by environmental historians such as Roderick Nash and William Cronon outlines the general Western view that nature and wilderness, particularly in the U.S., are

idealized as completely separate from human influence and habitation.3 An elite landscape design tradition further has valued nature primarily as aesthetic scenery, a pleasing view to be contemplated rather than used for work or boisterous play. The national parks in particular have come to embody these beliefs. Federal ownership combined with this core belief has had the effect of gradually reshaping parks, regardless of their past history, into natural-appearing landscapes empty of habitation or human use. 3) The embrace of unchanging permanence as a goal of park preservation. Because the first national parks represented “the last stand of primitive America,” it was essential to prevent any erosion of their symbolic power.4 This early understanding of

2 Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (1983). 3 See Roderick Nash, Wilderness and the American Mind (1982, third edition); William Cronon, “The Trouble With Wilderness; or, Getting Back to the Wrong Nature,” in Uncommon Ground: Toward Reinventing Nature, William Cronon, ed. (1995). 4 John Ise, Our National Park Policy: A Critical History (1961). 57 the national parks’ mission set up the tendency to embrace management strategies that perpetuate their symbolic strength indefinitely. Preservation of unchanging resources became the Park Service’s central purpose once established in 1916, and it has remained most responsive to management ideas that freeze resources in time, rather than allowing them to change and evolve. The agency’s ideas about what parks “ought” to be like particularly run counter to the presence of active communities, and the trend has been to remove inhabitants in favor of monumental natural scenery. This has serious implications for current-day management of cultural landscapes, as despite good intentions, agency staff must counter deeply-held biases, not only in management policies, but also that have been written in to the park landscapes themselves, so that their current appearance and interpretation reinforces the bias against changing, lived-in places. The first section of this chapter discusses the emergence of the three ideological themes shaping all national parks. It begins in the 1800s, when spectacular scenery was heralded as representative of America’s greatness as a nation, and arguments began to appear that it was the federal government’s responsibility to protect such places from degradation and change. It is in these arguments that the ideological themes first took form that still shape the NPS’s approach today. The actual creation of the agency followed fifty years of experience with national park establishment, so the agency directly inherited those pre-existing values and institutionalized them into its bureaucratic structure and management policies. The second section of the chapter will then focus more closely on NPS experiences with inhabited landscapes, and how they have been altered to better reflect the three ideological themes of the national park ideal. Although the goals of management have varied somewhat over the course of the agency’s history, the result is usually the same: the firmly entrenched themes keep working to reshape these places into line with the original romanticized park image. This not only has the effect of removing

58 residents from park areas and rewriting the areas’ cultural character and history, but also of perpetuating the national park ideal, as the landscapes reflect back the main themes of NPS ideology as the “correct” form a park should take. The chapter’s third section then asks, for parks where people and their history are recognized as an important part of the protected landscape, how has the agency dealt with management of historic and cultural resources? Despite ambitions to take history more seriously in the parks, the trend has been to continue the focus on arrested, unchanging historic and cultural resources with national significance, and even those generally take a back seat to concerns about natural resources. This culminates in the NPS’s national cultural landscape program, which over the past decade or so has attempted to address cultural landscape management more directly, but which has an uphill battle in the face of the powerful ideology that underlies most NPS decisions.

II. Three Ideological Themes

When many people think of America's national parks today, they envision large expanses of pristine natural areas. Parks are often imagined as sanctuaries for wilderness, and are strongly associated with the desire to preserve and protect ecosystems. Despite this natural image, the ideas and motivations behind creation of early national parks did not focus on the inherent value of nature for its own sake. Alfred Runte’s classic work, National Parks: The American Experience, argues that the primary motivation for setting aside the first parks stemmed from a national need for cultural icons, “natural wonders” that would assure Americans that they had a heritage equal to or

better than that of Europe.5 Places of spectacular natural scenery became infused with patriotic significance, representing America’s first major contribution to world heritage,

5 Alfred Runte, National Parks: The American Experience (1987, second edition). 59 and also became tourist attractions, where the public could bask in the symbolic grandeur and connect more deeply with their nationalistic pride. More specifically, the early parks came to embody the general Western view that nature and wilderness are completely separate from human habitation and use, despite their importance as tourist destinations.6 Once the parks took on such powerful cultural symbolism, they had to be held static, as unchanging as the national values they now reflected. Their appearance also was enhanced and manipulated by landscape designers so as to accentuate their grandeur as an unchanging view of uninhabited, pristine nature. Importantly, these monumental parks existed prior to the NPS; the Park Service was established after the fact to manage and maintain them. In its subsequent formation, the agency adopted these cultural values as its own.

A. Natural Views as National Icons

At the start of the nineteenth century, most Americans thought of wilderness, or “pure” nature, as something to be avoided, or better yet, tamed and subdued. Indeed, in 1831 the French writer Alexis De Tocqueville resolved to see some of the American wilderness while touring in the U.S., but “when he informed the frontiersmen of his desire to travel for pleasure into the primitive forest, they thought him mad.”7 Environmental historians have identified two major components to this traditional bias against wilderness: as a very real threat to survival, and as a dark and sinister symbol, inherited from a long tradition of Western thought.8 From its ancient biblical usage,

6 Tourism is rarely if ever considered a “use” of these lands, even though it clearly is. See Hal Rothman Devil’s Bargains: Tourism in the Twentieth-Century American West (1998). 7 Nash (1982), at 23-24. 8 “It was instinctively understood as something alien to man—an insecure and uncomfortable environment against which civilization had waged an unceasing struggle.” Nash (1982), at 8. For more extensive discussion of the conception of wilderness, see generally Nash, also Max Oelschlaeger, The Idea of Wilderness: From Prehistory to the Age of Ecology (1991), and J. Baird Callicott and Michael P. Nelson, eds., The Great New Wilderness Debate: An Expansive Collection of Writings Defining Wilderness from John Muir to Gary Snyder (1998). 60 “wilderness” implied the opposite of civilization, the place Adam and Eve were condemned to after being cast out of Paradise. The early Puritan colonists carried with them this idea of wilderness as a “wholly negative condition, something to be feared, loathed, and ultimately eradicated — something to be replaced by fair farms and shining cities on hills.”9 The Romantic movement, emerging out of eighteenth-century Europe and taking hold amongst many American writers, artists, and scientists in the 1820s and ‘30s, added some complexity to this traditional view of wilderness. As Enlightenment-based sciences revealed an apparently harmonious and orderly universe, they strengthened the Romantics’ belief that in nature one could see the handiwork of God, thus nature should be considered as sublime, inspiring exultation, awe, and eventually delight. The Romantic view of nature is specifically one empty of human habitation and influence; nature was considered to be the antithesis of civilization, and any human-induced

artificiality reduced the direct connection to the divine and the sublime.10 This combined with Rousseau’s idea of primitivism, “the belief that the best antidote to the ills of an overly refined and civilized modern world was a return to simpler, more primitive living.”11 While this perspective seems to contradict the earlier negative notion of wilderness, in reality they are two sides of the same coin; in both, nature is necessarily empty of, and distinct from, people. The only difference is that one or the other side of

this dualism is privileged. American romanticism (in contrast to the older European tradition) took an especially nationalist turn, with natural scenery becoming emblematic of national greatness.12 To better understand this development, it is important to note that the new nation, having twice fought free from European control politically in its first 40 years,

9 J. Baird Callicott and Michael P. Nelson, “Introduction,” in Callicot and Nelson (1998), at 4. 10 Nash (1982), at 51, notes that Romantic appreciations “are found among writers, artists, scientists, vacationers, gentlemen—people, in short, who did not face wilderness from the pioneer’s perspective.” 11 Cronon (1995), at 76. 12 Mark David Spence, Dispossessing the Wilderness: Indian Removal and the Making of the National Parks (1999), at 12. 61 still borrowed heavily from Europe for much of its “culture”—art, architecture, and literature. While wanting to distinguish themselves from European societies, Americans depended on them as their link to the richness of the great heritage of Western civilization. National leaders and intellectuals believed that the U.S. was destined for a glorious future, but doubts persisted as to whether the society could really survive apart from its European parentage. Historian Alfred Runte describes these doubts as a “painfully felt desire for time-honored traditions in the United States.”13 Having no truly ancient artifacts to point to as heritage, patriots began to rely on spectacular natural monuments as proof of distinctive national greatness: “[I]n at least one respect Americans sensed that their country was different: wilderness had no counterpart in the

Old World.”14 The physical landscape represented a way to quickly acquire a sense of national superiority. John Sears also suggests that nature tourism played a powerful role in America’s initial invention of itself as a culture. “From the beginning, Americans had sought their identity in their relationship to the land they had settled. It was inevitable, when they set out to establish a national culture in the 1820s and 1830s, that they would turn to the landscape of America as the basis of that culture.”15 This creation of a national identity as represented by the natural landscape “demanded a body of images and descriptions of those places—a mythology of unusual things to see—to excite people’s imaginations and induce them to travel.”16 These places not only then became popular tourist destinations, but served the role of sacred spaces in American culture, symbolic of all of its apparent virtues and distinctions.17 In short, the natural landscape could serve as ready-made heritage for the young nation. Glorification of natural surroundings, especially by drawing comparisons to European landmarks, can be seen in the writings of early

13 Runte (1987), at 11. 14 Nash (1982), at 67. 15 John F. Sears, Sacred Places: American Tourist Attractions in the Nineteenth Century (1989), at 4. 16 Sears (1989), at 3; emphasis is mine. 17 From Kenneth Olwig, “Reinventing Common Nature: Yosemite and Mount Rushmore - A Meandering Tale of a Double Nature,” in Uncommon Ground: Toward Reinventing Nature, Cronon, ed. (1995), at 401. 62 nationalists. In the early 1780s Philip Freneau, promoting the qualities of the newly- formed U.S., referred to the Mississippi as “this prince of rivers in comparison of whom the Nile is but a small rivulet, and the Danube a ditch.”18 Thomas Jefferson himself touted the Potomac River Gorge as “one of the most stupendous scenes in nature . . . worth a voyage across the Atlantic.”19 Yet despite the praising words of such national thinkers, there was little that was truly unique about most of the then-settled American landscape. The East’s best hope for a symbol of greatness lay in Niagara Falls, on the border between New York and Canada.20 Observers both home and abroad considered the falls to be America’s greatest natural spectacle; romantic and nationalistic views of nature merged to form an image of Niagara as sublime nature that would produce a corresponding moral sublimity in those

who associated with it.21 Historian William Irwin documents how the Falls was frequently used as an early patriotic symbol, that “images of Niagara increasingly suggested purity, prosperity and empire.”22 The Niagara landscape represented an idealized national identity, and these artistic portrayals began to reshape expectations of what the actual physical place should look like. But this natural splendor was compromised, and its symbolic power eroded, by increasing visitation to and development of Niagara. Developments such as bridges, paths, and staircases rendered both sides of the Falls accessible, and the nearby mill town of Manchester churned with industrial activity. By 1830, numerous small-time entrepreneurs competed to offer the best view of the falls (for steep prices), as well as

18 Philip M. Marsh, ed., The Prose of Philip Freneau (1955), as quoted in Nash (1982) at 68; emphasis in original. 19 Thomas Jefferson, “Notes on Virginia” (1781), in Adrienne Koch and William Peden, eds., The Life and Selected Writings of Thomas Jefferson (1944), at 182-83. 20 For extended discussions on Niagara and its cultural meanings see Patrick McGreevy, Imagining Niagara: The Meaning and Making of Niagara Falls (1994), and Elizabeth McKinsey, Niagara Falls: Icon of the American Sublime (1985). 21 Elizabeth McKinsey, “An American Icon,” in Niagara: Two Centuries of Changing Attitudes, 1697- 1901 (1985), at 89. 22 William Irwin, The New Niagara: Tourism, Technology and the Landscape of Niagara Falls, 1776-1917 (1996), at xix. 63 food, trinkets, or tours, crowding out the famous view with their tawdry stands and signs. Commercial development, according to Irwin, “spoiled the more raw, adventurous, and reverent mode of experiencing the Falls;” reality no longer matched the idealized image of Niagara as a symbol of national strength and purity.23 The commercialization did not go unnoticed by European visitors, who wasted no time in roundly condemning the private profiteers overwhelming Niagara.24 This stream of published criticism hit a raw nerve: Americans, already sensitive to their lack of contributions to “world culture,” stood accused of having no pride in themselves or their past. The lack of control over the private development of Niagara Falls led to its apparent ruin; by allowing it to become overrun with ugly commercialization for private profit, Americans were seen as willingly selling their cultural legacy to the highest bidder.

B. Creation of Controlled, Unchanging Landscapes: The First National Parks

However, word of spectacular landscapes opening up in the West soon offered a chance for the nation to recover from the embarrassment of Niagara. By the mid-1840s, white American settlers were rapidly moving west of the Mississippi River, displacing Native American tribes as they went, and encountering truly unique landscapes along the way. Western expansion represented the country's future; Manifest Destiny, the reigning territorial philosophy of the time, carried a message of progressive advancement and historic inevitability. This expansion moved through some of the boldest and most magnificent landscapes ever seen on earth; surely this must be a sign of national

23Irwin (1996), at 18. Sears (1989) finds that many tourist accounts from there express disappointment, boredom or irreverence, having been distracted from the view by the variety of business operations surrounding it. The commercial nature of the experience reduced the grand natural scenery to something more like a carnival or freak show (at 18). 24 As part of his 1831 trip to America, De Tocqueville visited the Falls, and warned that it would soon be spoiled by development. Only three years later, two visiting English ministers noted similarities between the nearby town and its namesake, the industrial city of Manchester, England, and complained that “some universal voice ought to interfere and prevent the money-seekers.” From Charles M. Dow, Anthology and Bibliography of Niagara Falls (1921), as quoted in Runte (1987), at 6. 64 superiority! Journalists traveled west, and published widely-read descriptions of the marvelous landscapes they passed through. With most of the U.S. population still living along the Atlantic coast, the West became a stage, with Easterners watching as an audience through the popular journals and newspapers of the time as the spectacle of the West unfolded. Its landscape views became symbolic images in the popular culture, portrayed so as to maximize their power as nationalistic heritage These ecstatic descriptions of the West began shaping landscapes in the imaginations of the American public as symbols of their national pride and destiny— particularly because, as with Niagara, they were romanticized as pristine wilderness, an empty natural landscape that could be understood as sublime and grand. Representations of the West, in paintings and literature as well as the popular press, idealized the landscape within a particular nationalistic framework that emphasized majestic and eternal natural scenery that the heroic white pioneers could then “discover.” These images served to endorse particular conceptions about the Western experience, rather

than simply illustrate it.25 Mark Spence notes that “the conflation of racial, political, and geographic ‘destinies’ with the cant of conquest effectively erased the human history of western North America and replaced it with an atemporal natural history that somehow prefigured the American conquest of these lands.”26 The discovery by whites of Yosemite Valley and the Sierra redwoods, in 1851

and 1852, respectively, provided two early examples of natural wonders through which the U.S. could claim cultural recognition. Immediately, as if to show their relief, nationalistic writers began drawing comparisons between Western and European mountains, going as far as to belittle the Swiss Alps in favor of Yosemite. Horace Greeley, owner and editor of the New York Tribune, visited the Valley in 1859 and

25 William H. Truettner, ed., The West As America: Reinterpreting Images of the Frontier 1820-1920, (1991), provides an excellent examination of the art of the time and its implicit cultural messages and values. 26 Spence (1999), at 28-29, emphasis in original. Also Cronon (1995) at 79: he describes wilderness as “flight from history.” 65 proclaimed it “the most unique and majestic of nature’s marvels.”27 Samuel Bowles, editor of the Springfield Republican, exclaimed, “it is easy to imagine, in looking upon [the sides of the Valley], that you are in the ruins of an old Gothic cathedral, to which those of Cologne and Milan are but baby-houses.”28 Surveyor Clarence King described the giant sequoias in 1864, writing that no “fragment of human work, broken pillar or sand-worn image half lifted over pathetic desert—none of these link the past as to-day with anything like the power of these monuments of living antiquity.”29 There was no mention of the resident Indians, although, despite several attempts by the military to relocate them out of the area, they maintained a community in the valley.30 They were already being edited out of the landscape, so as not to taint the national symbolism.

By the end of the 1850s at Yosemite, however, private entrepreneurs were already hard at work, trying to make a profit by capitalizing on the grandeur of the natural discoveries. Individuals attempted to claim from the public domain portions of the Valley with the best access to the spectacular views, in anticipation of the sightseers sure to follow in their footsteps. Similarly, the giant sequoias were not useful for lumber— when cut down, they tended to shatter upon impact with the ground—but many of the largest specimens were stripped of their bark and cut into sections, and then shipped off for sale as curiosities in the East and overseas, thus destroying the spectacular resource so that it could be sold piecemeal. Many of the pieces were also exhibited at various

World’s Fairs, further investing the trees with national symbolism.31 Both Yosemite Valley and the sequoia groves represented a new claim at U.S. greatness via natural splendor, but both were threatened to be spoiled by uncontrolled use and exploitation.

27 Horace Greeley, An Overland Journey From New York to San Francisco in the Summer of 1859 (1860), at 306-307. 28 Samuel Bowles, Across the Continent (1865), at 226-27. 29 Clarence King, Mountaineering in the Sierra Nevada (1872), as quoted in Runte (1987), at 21. 30 Spence (1999), at 102. 31 Many Europeans thought the tree slices were a hoax, as they simply could not imagine that any tree could actually reach such an enormous size. 66 Another round of nationalistic criticism sprang up in response, lamenting the apparent repeat of Niagara Falls’ fate in the Sierras. In 1853 Gleason’s Pictorial, a popular British journal, published a letter from an irate Californian regarding the destruction of the “Discovery Tree” for public display. Had the giant been native of Europe, he suggested, “such a natural production would have been cherished and protected, if necessary, by law; but in this money-making, go-ahead community, thirty or forty thousand dollars are paid for it and the purchaser chops it down and ships it off for a shilling show.”32 The cultural symbolism invested in Yosemite and the redwoods was threatened with being diminished in power, just like at Niagara, if private individuals were allowed to claim the land and spoil the natural scenery. But unlike at Niagara, in order to protect the national interest in these places, the federal government became involved in efforts to preserve them.33 By early 1864 nationalists and Western promoters began urging legislation to protect Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa Grove of giant sequoias, to prevent private occupation and to preserve them for “public use, resort and recreation.”34 Niagara Falls served as a role model of sorts, both illustrating the possibilities in drawing tourists, and highlighting the dangers of over-commercialization by small entrepreneurs. However,

32 As quoted in Joseph H. Engbeck, Jr., The Enduring Giants (1973), at 77. 33 This is not to say that no one would profit from the views. While it appears that private ownership of the attractions themselves, or control of access to the views, was not to be tolerated, corporate interests could realize great profits from providing transportation to and facilities at these new public destinations. Particularly by the 1850s and ‘60s, about the same time that Yosemite was first entering the public eye, the industry of providing for tourists had become increasingly sophisticated, and shrewd businessmen were on the lookout for new opportunities. Again the symbolic cultural meaning and importance of natural scenery as sacred national identity was drawn upon to create the mythology around potential tourist destinations; art at this time emphasized the coexistence of scenery and industry, rather than as incompatible. See Nancy K. Anderson, “’The Kiss of Enterprise’: The Western Landscape as Symbol and Resource” in The West as America: Reinterpreting Images of the Frontier, 1820-1920, Truettner ed. (1991): landscape paintings as advertisements to investors back east (in water, mining, and agricultural operations), also to tourists and settlers; minimized conflict between development and scenery (at 240-243). For more detail on the interweaving of private industry in public land policy, see Leigh Raymond and Sally Fairfax, “Fragmentation in Public Domain Law and Policy: An Alternative to the ‘Shift-to-Retention’ Thesis,” Natural Resources Journal 39:649-753 (1999). 34 The letter was written by Israel Ward Raymond, California state representative of the Central American Steamship Transit Company, and sent to John Conness, the junior U.S. senator from California. Alfred Runte, Yosemite: The Embattled Wilderness (1990), at 18. 67 the official rhetoric surrounding the legislation relied on the cultural symbolism of the iconic Valley, rather than any economic rationales.35 The argument found support in Congress, and on June 30, 1864, President Lincoln signed the Yosemite Act into law, creating the first nationally-established public park in the U.S.36 The grant itself was small—only the valley itself, its encircling peaks which formed its scenic backdrop, and the Mariposa Grove were protected—and was shortly thereafter turned over to the State of California for administration.37 Spence describes the two protected areas as “powerful symbols of national unity, just as the Civil War seemed to finally draw toward an inevitable conclusion.”38 Significantly, the grant contained a clause insisting that the protection be “inalienable”; as Runte writes, “from a cultural perspective, preservation without permanence would be no real test of the

nation’s sincerity.”39 As with most formal preservation efforts, this shows an early emphasis on stasis, preventing change so as to protect the symbolic qualities of the grant in perpetuity. The first national park preserved by the U.S. was clearly imbued with the three ideological themes inherited by the NPS: a natural landscape frozen permanently into a static image of national greatness. Ten years later, an almost identical process of nationalistic description and appropriation took place with the “discovery” and exploration of the area that would become Yellowstone National Park. The area had not received much attention from early

explorers, mostly due to its inaccessibility. However, discovery of gold in Montana in the 1860s brought people to the area, and soon tales of wondrous scenery began

35 According to Runte, the motives pushing the legislation through Congress were primarily business- related, yet these remained mostly hidden in the public debate. 36 U.S., 1864, 13 Stat. 325. 37 It was in fact fully two years before California agreed to take over management of the park. The park was effectively expanded in 1890, to accommodate increasing numbers of tourists, by creating a ring of “reserved forest lands” surrounding the original grant; this expansion was encouraged by the Southern Pacific Railroad, as well as agricultural interests, hoping for greater watershed protection. California eventually receded the Valley back to federal ownership, and combined with the surrounding protected forest lands, to form the current park in 1906. See Runte (1990), at 45-56, 83. 38 Spence (1999), at 35. 39 Runte (1987), at 29. 68 circulating in Eastern society. The proliferation of geysers and other geothermal features at Yellowstone was utterly unique; once again, many comparisons were drawn to European ruins. Charles W. Cook, on an 1869 expedition to the area, noted a limestone formation that “bore a strong resemblance to an old castle,” whose “rampart and bulwark were slowly yielding to the ravages of time.” Still, “the stout old turret stood out in bold relief against the sky, with every embrasure as perfect in outline as though but a day ago it had been built by the hand of man.”40 And once again, the local Indians were left out of the landscape descriptions and images so that it could be symbolically recast as “empty wilderness,” despite archeological evidence and current native residents to

suggest otherwise.41 Similar to what had happened in Yosemite, almost immediately after the “discovery” of the Upper Geyser Basin individual private interests began fencing off the most scenic areas for future tourist spots. In response, a campaign was started for government protection of the area.42 A formal survey expedition to the area in 1871 included artist Thomas Moran and photographer William Henry Jackson to provide a visual record of the expedition’s discoveries.43 The resulting paintings and photos of the monumental views were later passed around the floor of Congress as it debated the park bill, helping to convince them in its favor. A report written by the House Committee on Public Lands made clear the promotion of the area as a cultural oasis, and criticized

private individuals’ attempts to lay claim to the scenic features, and “to fence in these rare wonders so as to charge visitors a fee, as is now done at Niagara Falls, for the sight

40 Charles W. Cook, “The Valley of the Upper Yellowstone,” Western Monthly 4 :61 (1870), as quoted in Runte (1987), at 35. 41 Evidence suggests that Yellowstone was an important area for obsidian, also long-used sites near geysers were probably connected with healing powers and spiritual associations. The tribes in the area also used fire to manage the forests, opening up “broad savannas” to attract game, ease travel, and encouraging growth of certain kinds of plants, and also keeping favorite camping sites clear of brush and insects. Spence (1999), at 43-44. 42 Sellars (1997), at 9. The initial suggestion of creating a national park at Yellowstone was written in a note to survey leader Dr. Ferdinand Hayden in 1871 on stationary from Jay Cooke and Company, a principle financier for the Northern Pacific. 43 Sears (1989), at 161. Note that Moran’s involvement was directly subsidized by Jay Cooke & Co. 69 of that which ought to be as free as the air or water.”44 Once again, Niagara served as an effective reminder of the nation's failure to protect its cultural heritage; the report stressed that the leaders must match their rhetoric with a commitment to action. The bill passed Congress and was signed on March 1, 1872.45 Significantly, both of the two first national parks, later to become “crown jewels” of the National Park Service, were initially created in order to prevent change in natural scenery that the Eastern U.S. could identify with as uniquely American, providing tourists with new destinations where they could gain a sense of national heritage. The establishment of all the earliest national parks and monuments—including Yellowstone, Yosemite, Sequoia, Mount Rainier, Glacier, and the Grand Canyon—through both popular imagery and legislative process marks the creation of static landscapes to match society’s idealizations of natural and national heritage. The parks were infused with symbolic ideology, their natural scenery representing unchanging visions of national greatness, demonstrating the lasting vitality and virtue of America’s republican government.

C. Reshaping Nature To Better Match the Ideal

Once these early parks were established, they still needed to be developed to allow access to the public, adding roads, trails, bridges, and other facilities. The design of these developments was inspired by prevailing ideas of how parks “ought” to look primarily derived from England in the form of designed private natural landscape

44 U.S. Congress, House Committee on the Public Lands, The Yellowstone Park, H. Report 26 to accompany H.R. 764, 42nd Congress, 2nd session, February 27, 1872, pp. 1-2; emphasis is mine. 45 U.S. 17 Stat. 32. As was the case with Yosemite, Yellowstone's initial protection was largely of symbolic importance, rather than resulting in immediate financial rewards. The large size of the park was due not to a desire to protect wilderness but to the lack of accurate surveys of all the scenic geologic features at the time; the boundaries were drawn large enough to ensure they would all be included. It would be several years until Yellowstone would receive any significant tourist visitation; even the Northern Pacific Railroad, the original advocate for creation of the park, didn’t connect to the park until 1883. Sellars (1997), at 19. 70 gardens. This adds another layer of apparent “naturalness” to these areas that is actually artifice, nature being used to disguise control and manipulation of the landscape. Park design and management is a key avenue by which the three ideological themes become written into the physical landscape, and thus is a central part of my analysis of landscape change under NPS control. Kenneth Olwig notes that early British landscape parks had been formed primarily through enclosure of village commons by wealthy landowners, replacing them with parks “designed to look like a ‘natural’ functioning commons but which, in reality, [were] artificial constructions for private pleasure.”46 The resulting landscapes were empty of habitation or human use, other than recreation and contemplation of the scenic views, creating “an aesthetic appearance that ‘naturalizes’ human conditions many would

regard as unnatural.”47 These ideas required manipulation of the landscape in order to increase aesthetic enjoyment, and were rooted in the tastes of wealthy British landowners trying to assert their absolute privilege over the former commons around them. The first manifestations of this British landscape aesthetic in the U.S. took place in the design of wealthy estates along the Hudson River in New York. Writer Andrew Jackson Downing influenced American appreciation for this scenic vision of natural landscapes, translating a Romantic “idea of ‘wilderness,’ as evocative of the sublime and picturesque, into design terms.”48 The first designers of urban parks in the U.S., including Frederick Law Olmstead and Calvert Vaux who created Central Park in New York City, followed a similar philosophy to Downing’s, maintaining that the designer’s role was to “strengthen the inherent expression of beautiful or picturesque natural character.” Hence “nature” was not just what is found in the absence of people, but also requires extensive human manipulation of the landscape to get it to look “right.”49

46 Olwig (1995), at 387. 47 Ibid. at 395. 48 Linda McClelland, Building the National Parks: Historic Landscape Design and Construction (1998), at 19-20. 49 Ibid. at 36. 71 While American national parks were expressly intended for public rather than private use, their design stemmed from this very elite conception of what a park ought to look like, a conception that had less to do with the actual physical “nature” present than with a privileged landscape aesthetic. Olmstead’s preliminary report on the development of the Valley and the Mariposa Grove in 1865 suggested design ideas much in line with his work in Central Park, development that would “protect natural features and scenery while at the same time making them accessible for the enjoyment of the public.”50 Olmstead specifically advocated the establishment of Yosemite in order to allow access to all citizens, not just the rich, as he believed appreciation of natural beauty to be essential to public health. However, his own arguments take on a distinctively elitist tone: “The power of scenery to affect men is, in a large way, proportionate to the degree of their civilization and the degree in which their taste has been cultivated.”51 The lower classes who didn’t properly appreciate the beauties of natural scenery would be educated through exposure to such places, whether they liked it or not, for their own good.52 National parks were therefore designed to emphasize the particular elements of nature that reinforced the assertion of this particular landscape aesthetic, and the power relations implied by it. The effects of these design ideas on the national parks can still be seen today. Downing’s aesthetic originally emphasized “scenery, vista, enframement and sequence,” providing the picturesque along with comfort and interest throughout the landscape. He

50 Ibid. at 52. 51 See Frederick Law Olmstead, “The Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa Big Trees: A Preliminary Report” (1865), with an introductory note by Laura Wood Roper, Landscape Architecture 43:12-25 (1952), at 20. It is important to note that this report was suppressed by other members of the Commission, and was not actually published until 1952; still, it reflects the mode of thinking that went into park design. 52 Specifically Olmstead wrote, following the previous quote: “But as with the bodily powers, if one group of muscles is developed by exercise exclusively, and all others neglected, the result is general feebleness, so it is with the mental facilities. And men who exercise those faculties or susceptibilities of the mind which are called into play by beautiful scenery so little that they seem to be inert with them, are either in a diseased condition for excessive devotion of the mind to a limited range of interests, or their whole minds are in a savage state; that is, a state of low development. The latter class need to be drawn out generally; the former need relief from their habitual matters of interest and to be drawn out in those parts of their mental nature which have been habitually left idle and inert.” Ibid. 72 stressed the importance of an “approach road,” usually curved, following existing physical contours, planted with vegetation that appeared to be completely “natural,” and ending in views carefully planned. Paths were designed to correspond to the scene through which they passed, i.e. rugged where the landscape was rough and dramatic, smooth and easy where the scene was gentler and more refined. The various components of this type of estate landscape design translated into practical counterparts in the parks: The gatehouse would become the entrance station. Summerhouses would become overlooks and picnic shelters. Rustic seats would become sturdy benches and picnic tables . . . The circular drives would become the loop roads that facilitated the flow of traffic around campgrounds and picnic areas or encircled parks to

provide access and scenic views from many points.53 Through incorporation of these design ideas in the development of the early national parks, the aesthetic preferences of English feudal landowners were “naturalized” into the landscape, so that we can barely imagine a national park without loop roads and scenic overlooks. These are the types of infrastructure and facilities that national park visitors now expect to find, reinforcing the idealized “natural” aesthetic of the parks, and standardizing the landscapes into one particular style of appearance. Chapter Four will detail the ways in which these ideas have been written into the Point Reyes landscape in part via these kinds of design strategies and policies.

D. Institutionalization Of The Three Themes

Frederick Law Olmstead first suggested that the U.S. government had a duty to protect unusual scenery in 1865, yet by the turn of the century the national parks were more of an accumulation than any kind of an organized system or government program.54

53 McClelland (1998), at 21, 28, and 34. 54 Olmstead (1952), at 21. It is interesting to note that Olmstead compares this duty to the public trust protection of waterways, preventing private appropriation and obstruction of navigation routes. 73 By 1900 there were only five national parks; by the time of the NPS establishment in 1916, their number had increased to fourteen. The government’s eminent domain authority was confirmed by the Supreme Court in 1888, generally recognizing federal authority to acquire land (even from unwilling sellers) for public purposes, but those purposes did not yet include acquisition for parks.55 Rather, the first parks were reserved from lands already owned by the government, simply closed to entry by settlers. These early parks were intended to be self-supporting, and were given little or no budget from Congress for either staff or maintenance.56 Army troops were called in to protect Yosemite and Yellowstone early on, while other sites had little or no management, and certainly no coordination from one park to another. Yet in the first two decades of the 20th century, the government gradually took on more responsibility in preserving and managing parks, eventually bringing the existing parks under the management of a single agency, the National Park Service. As a result, the young agency adopted the symbolic values invested in the early national parks as its own ideological approach. Before the establishment of the NPS, parks were thought of as vulnerable to Congressional politics, as individual senators might resent restrictions of local economic land uses. They also needed infrastructure development that was too expensive for private concessioners to handle alone. Adding further pressure was the overall Progressive conservation mentality of the time which “challenged the national park as an outdated and inefficient method of managing public land.”57 Some worried that parks would be taken over by utilitarian interests, and soon articulated the need for a new government bureau to govern the parks.58

55 Note that the federal government was given eminent domain authority to create national memorial battlefields, but these were largely controlled by the War Department at the time. 56 See Paul Herman Buck, The Evolution of the National Park System of the United States (1946), at 9. 57 Ethan Carr, Wilderness By Design: Landscape Architecture and the National Park Service (1998), at 55. While scenic quality had originally been one of the considerations in selecting forest reserves in the 1890s, by the arrival of Gifford Pinchot in the 1900s, scenic preservation was only one of an array of multiple uses being considered in resource management. 58 See Samuel P. Hays, Conservation and the Gospel of Efficiency: The Progressive Conservation Movement, 1890-1920 (1999), at 196-198. Of particular concern was Gifford Pinchot’s efforts to get the 74 By 1915, Interior Secretary Franklin Lane had hired Stephen T. Mather, a Chicago businessman, to take charge of the parks, along with young assistant Horace Albright.59 Together Mather and Albright produced an extensive publicity campaign for the proposed park bureau bill. They took advantage of an existing tourism campaign by railroad companies urging Americans to travel within the U.S., adding the patriotic theme of “See America First.” Mather opportunistically realized that the war in Europe prevented Americans from traveling abroad, representing a rare chance for the national

parks to “expand their operations and win new friends.”60 The media blitz proved successful, and in 1916 a bill finally passed creating the National Park Service.61 There is a definite mismatch between much of the rhetoric surrounding the establishment of the NPS and the actual substance of debate leading up to the Act of 1916. The rhetorical language is most often associated with wilderness advocate John Muir, who’s preservationist perspective continued the romantic view of nature as a sacred temple, everlasting and unchanging, and championed parks as the best way to protect it from the ravages of civilization.62 It is also exemplified by the writings of Olmstead and Olmstead Jr., who emphasized the importance of the preservation of scenery of those primeval types which are in most parts of the world rapidly vanishing for all eternity before the increased thoroughness of the economic use of the land. In the National Parks direct economic returns,

if any, are properly the by-products; and even rapidity and efficiency in making them accessible to the people, although of great importance, are

Interior parks transferred into his new more utilitarian-focused Forest Service in the Agriculture Department. 59 Horace M. Albright and Robert Cahn, The Birth of the National Park Service: The Founding Years, 1913-33 (1985), Chapters 1-2. Note that Mather had made his fortune in borax, but was also an avid mountaineer and longtime member of the Sierra Club. 60 Donald C. Swain, “The Passage of the National Park Service Act of 1916,” Wisconsin Magazine of History 50(1):4-17 (1966), at 7. 61 39 Stat. 535 62 For more on Muir, see Stephen R. Fox, John Muir and His Legacy: The American Conservation Movement (1981); Thurman Wilkins, John Muir: Apostle of Nature (1995); and Sally M. Miller, ed., John Muir in Historical Perspective (1999). 75 wholly secondary to the one dominant purpose of preserving essential aesthetic qualities of their scenery unimpaired as a heritage to the infinite numbers of generations to come.63 This rhetoric clearly reflects the three ideological themes of parks representing unchanging nationally-significant nature in no uncertain terms. However, in the utilitarian conservationism of the era, parks needed some kind of practical justification for their existence, to stand up to competing economic uses of the land and resources. Tourism provided that justification, as the only “dignified” way to promote parks. Historian Donald Swain writes, “The political facts of life in 1915 and 1916 simply demanded that the parks be ‘used.’ Unless and until the American people started flocking to the national park reservations, Congress would refuse to appropriate

adequate funds for the administration and protection of the parks.”64 Also, the potential economic profits from tourism prompted commercial interests to use their political influence to support park protection and expansion. This tension between idealistic rhetoric and economic motivation remains written into the statute, creating the NPS’s “dual mandate” of preservation of “unimpaired” scenery while encouraging public use, while not ever defining the actual meaning of “unimpaired.”65 In this way, the romanticized image of what a national park ought to be—nationally-significant unchanging nature—screens the political reality of their support and maintenance,

causing it to appear that parks are not “used” at all, despite their high tourism numbers.

63 Frederick Law Olmstead Jr., “The Distinction Between National Parks and National Forests,” Landscape Architecture 6(3):114-115 (1916), at 114; emphasis is mine. Also see E. A. Sherman, “The Forest Service and the Preservation of Natural Beauty,” in the same issue, at 115-119. Sherman, the acting Chief Forester of the Forest Service at the time, wrote specifically that “National Parks are areas where economic considerations can be practically excluded” (at 117). 64 Swain (1966), at 9. 65 Note that the language was written by Olmstead Jr., who as a landscape architect would see “no inherent contradiction in preserving a place through its thoughtful development as a park.” Carr (1998), at 5. Historian Robin Wink asserts that preservation is somehow privileged by the phrasing of the Act (see his 1996 article, “Dispelling the Myth,” National Parks 70(7-8):52-53), but most other researchers disagree. Sellars (1997) identifies the primary concerns for NPS founders as “preservation of scenery, the economic benefits of tourism, and efficient management of the parks,” rather than a mandate for “exacting preservation of natural conditions” (at 29). 76 The move toward more systematically organizing and administering parks coincides with the Progressive Era, roughly 1890-1920, a period exemplified by the belief that public policy decisions should be based primarily on scientific principles of management and efficiency.66 Technically trained, scientific professionals became the policy experts, and they filled the increasing number of newly established federal bureaucracies, each created to serve and regulate specific interest groups. This early period of the agency’s existence was dominated by the work of landscape architects and engineers as self-appointed scientific experts, with the effect of creating standardized designs and infrastructure development, and thus shaping both the physical landscapes

and the cultural expectations for the national parks.67 Their work created a national standard for appearance and significance that reflected the three themes of NPS ideology, and the park landscapes preserved by the agency—like the churches in Lefebvre’s example in the last chapter—continued to perpetuate and reinforce the idealization of what parks “ought” to look like. In all the discussions of preservation in the parks at the time of NPS establishment, the importance of protecting scenic beauty via careful park development remained paramount, and over this realm of management, landscape architects considered themselves the “experts.” The wording of the central phrase in the Organic Act has been attributed to Olmstead Jr., and is “indicative of the advocacy of the

landscape architecture profession for the preservation of natural areas of national importance.”68 NPS advocate Horace McFarland suggested that it was the job of landscape architects to educate the public, and that “professional standards, not politics . .

66 See generally Hays (1959); also Samuel Trask Dana and Sally K. Fairfax, “Conservation in Practice and Politics: The Golden Era of Roosevelt and Pinchot, 1898-1910,” Chapter 3 in Forest and Range Policy: Its Development in the United States, second edition (1980), at 69-97. 67 Standard discussions of these trends include James Q. Wilson, “The Rise of the Bureaucratic State,” The Public Interest 41:77-104 (1975); and Herbert Kaufman, “Emerging Conflicts in the Doctrine of Public Administration,” American Political Science Review 50:1057-1073 (1956). 68 McClelland (1998), at 8. 77 . should determine the future of the parks.”69 In the climate of the Progressive Era, professional experts became the policy-makers, giving landscape architects, all technically trained to uniform qualifications and a similar aesthetic, a heavy influence on the direction and scope of the young Service. Carr describes their expertise as “analogous (in a more artistic vein) to the scientific expertise by Pinchot’s foresters.”70 Along with engineers and park rangers, they formed the core of an emerging “leadership culture” in the NPS, all of whom considered science to be the apolitical basis for proper efficient management.71 Also during this period, American society was changing in ways that created a much greater demand for outdoor recreation than there had ever been before. Changes in labor practices and the length of the work week made for more leisure time among the middle class, and vacations became something considered a necessity for white collar workers. The rapid rise of importance of the automobile in everyday life (due to increased availability and reductions in costs) made people far more mobile, and vastly

increased visitation to the national parks.72 This vacationing middle class formed “the public” for the national parks, and it shared an aesthetic appreciation that stemmed from the earlier iconic association of parks with patriotism. Carr notes that the ideals of national unity and superiority “tantalized the generation that had been torn apart by civil war and frightened by the diversity of urban immigrants.”73 Park advocates believed that

visiting their natural wonders would not only encourage health and efficiency of working

69 Ibid., emphasis is mine. In fact, the American Society of Landscape Architects recommended, among other things, that 1916 bill include “an advisory board composed of landscape architects and an engineer, whose services would be called upon whenever landscape questions in existing parks or proposals for new parks were considered.” This suggestion was dropped from the eventual bill. 70 Carr (1998), at 6. 71 Sellars (1997), at 49. 72 In 1914 the national parks had 240,000 visitors; by 1926, the total had jumped to 2,315,000 visitors, mostly due to increased travel by automobile. Charles B. Hosmer, Jr., Preservation Comes of Age: From Williamsburg to the National Trust, 1926-1947,Volume 1 (1981), at 1. 73 Carr (1998), at 85. At the time there was general concern in the popular culture about the recent influx of Southern and Eastern European immigrants, fearing that their presence was eroding national identity and patriotism. 78 people, but also maintain “individual patriotism and federal solidarity.”74 These values were designed into the national park landscapes, and thus reflected back to the visiting public, constantly recreating and reinforcing the ideological association of unchanging natural scenery with national pride. For these design and engineering experts at the new NPS, accessibility was the foremost concern.75 At a time when all of the major parks were located in the West yet close to 90% of the American population still lived in the Midwest and East, it was imperative that visitors be able to reach the parks with relative ease, and to find all the amenities they needed to make their stay comfortable.76 Thus during the 1920s the NPS developed the parks extensively, adding roads, hotels, trails, etc., to allow for greater access. Mather insisted that developments harmonize with the scenic landscapes, rather than impair them, so most tourist facilities were built in “rustic” architectural styles, but

simply not building them was never considered an option.77 By the mid-1920s, Park Service landscape architects and engineers had well established a characteristic and original style of development that responded to the practical necessities of park facilities, while remaining rooted in the earlier style of American landscape park design. These efforts manipulated the landscape in very specific ways to guide tourists to particular places and views. The effect, as described by NPS historian Ethan Carr, was to “choreograph visitors’ movements and define the pace and sequence of much of their

experience,” while remaining almost invisible to those being directed, so that the parks took on a “consistent appearance, character, and level of convenience that most visitors have since come to associate, almost unconsciously, with their experience of park

74 Ibid. at 72, quoting McFarland. 75 Even John Muir agreed it was necessary, describing the presence of tourists in the national parks as “a hopeful sign of the times.” John Muir, Our National Parks (1991), at 2. 76 Park visitors expected facilities comparable to those found while traveling through Europe, depending “not only upon efficient highways, but also upon a comfortable inn, a clean bed, and a palatable cuisine,” and the NPS was determined to provide them. Buck (1946), at 53. 77 In a 1922 conference, the park superintendents issued a statement that a park without proper facilities would be “merely a wilderness, not serving the purpose for which it was set aside, not benefiting the general public’.” Sellars (1997), at 63. 79 scenery, wildlife, and wilderness.”78 Park design continued to reinforce the romanticized park ideal by creating a standardized appearance for the national parks, and naturalizing the agency’s manipulation of the landscape as a necessity for proper preservation. The NPS quickly came to regard itself as the agency in charge of objectively and apolitically institutionalizing the national park idea as a symbol of American values— values considered to be constant, unchanging, and uniform across the country. This early identification with objective, scientific expertise continues to shape the agency’s management philosophy, taking a standardized, nationally consistent approach, even when faced with the relatively subjective and potentially poly-vocal task of preserving historic and cultural heritage. Extensive design and development of the parks aimed to provide greater public access, and complete federal ownership of the land sought to prevent unwanted private exploitation of the parks’ symbolic values, further shaping these protected areas into expressions of cultural idealizations of what a park “ought” to be. All of these trends tended to continue shaping the parks into static national icons, emphasizing pure and depopulated natural scenery.

In summary, the creation of early national parks to preserve “pure” static areas of natural wonders established a set of national idealizations that have been associated with parks since their inception, and that continue to inform and shape what the NPS considers “proper” park management and appearance today. Ethan Carr says, “Like any act of preservation, the park required an alteration of the essential qualities of what it preserved. Both physically and conceptually, the park interpreted a place as a view; it transmuted land into landscape.”79 Design and development only served to reinforce these cultural ideas about parks as pristine sanctuaries of uninhabited nature, representing national virtue and vitality. And in order to protect these ideals, this early understanding of the

78 Carr (1998), at 1. 79 Ibid. at 16. 80 parks’ mission sets up the tendency within the agency itself to embrace management theories that emphasize stability, permanence, and lack of change.

III: NPS Management Of Inhabited Landscapes

At about the same time as the establishment of the NPS, Americans were adopting new popular ideas about wilderness and nature. Nash sees 1890 as a dividing point when “gradually increasing numbers of Americans came to see wilderness as an

asset rather than a liability.”80 As Frederick Jackson Turner’s report formally declared the frontier closed, open country became an increasingly powerful symbol of the national character as rugged, independent, and democratic. The frontier was framed nostalgically as an older, simpler, truer world about to disappear forever, even though it had never actually existed as such.81 Nature, because of these nationalistic associations with the frontier, was increasingly seen as threatened and in need of protection, usually in the form of national parks. Cronon points out that these mythic ideals of wilderness and the frontier, and by association the parks, ranged from ambivalence to downright hostility toward the modern world.82 By removing all traces of former inhabitants and designing the aesthetic experience through the natural landscape, park managers allowed tourists to

“safely enjoy the illusion that they were seeing their nation in its pristine, original state, in the new morning of God’s own creation.”83 These ideas contributed to the ideological view, both in the public’s eye and within the NPS itself, of national parks as uninhabited

80 Nash (1987), at xii. 81 Alex Nemerov, “Doing the ‘Old America’: The Image of the American West, 1880-1920” in The West As America: Reinterpretting Images of the Frontier 1820-1920, Truettner ed. (1991), at 311. 82 Furthermore, they came from a specifically elite class background; those who most lamented the passing of the frontier were often those whose urban industrial-capitalist developments had contributed greatly to its diminishment, such as Henry Ford or John D. Rockefeller. 83 Cronon (1995), at 76-79. 81 wildernesses frozen in time and protected from the ravages of civilization, veiling the actual frontier history of conflict for control of land and resources. Since 1916, however, new parks have increasingly been created from private rather than federal lands. While the NPS did not initially have authority to condemn private holdings directly, it was able to accept lands purchased by either State governments or private benefactors. This situation led to the creation of a number of parks in areas previously inhabited by non-native, white residents. Despite the fact that the residents were not Indians and thus were not subject to racism and policies of eradication, they were still seen as antithetical to park establishment and protection, and so were removed, either directly by State condemnation, or covertly through purchase by park benefactors. These new kinds of parks—including Grand Teton, Great Smokey Mountains, and Shenandoah—ignored the cultural dynamics that had created these landscapes and replaced them with empty, idealized “natural” parks more consistent with the agency’s ideological themes. It is important to clarify the distinction between tourists and the ideological theme that insists that nature be empty of people, as tourism necessarily involves human presence in the parks. The difference is between residents in parks, who are seen as antithetical to the park ideal, and visitors, who justify the parks’ existence. Even though the density of tourists in given areas of parks may be higher on average than that of many towns, official policies still generally welcome visitors in parks, while they tend to discourage, if not completely remove, residents.84 Environmentalist rhetoric has encouraged this distinction, particularly in the last few decades, making nature “by definition a place where leisured humans come only to visit and not to work, stay, or

84 Note that visitors are only considered problematic at very high densities (such as in Yosemite Valley today), usually due to the environmental problems associated with them, such as trampling vegetation, causing air pollution, and traffic congestion. Also the kind of recreation they are pursuing makes a difference to critics; for example, backpacking and contemplation of nature are fine, but snowmobiling or rollerblading are not. 82 live.”85 The romanticized conception of nature as uninhabited pits recreation tourists against natives and the rural people who actually earn a living from the land, devaluing their connections to (and knowledge of) the land through work and home. It can also cause them to be sentimentalized so much that if they do anything “unprimitive, modern, and unnatural,” they fall from grace.

A. Residents as Incompatible with the Park Ideal

Throughout U.S. history, native Americans have frequently been cast as being part of the past, and any actual living native communities were ignored, predicted to disappear, or eradicated directly. A number of recent books by Mark Spence, Theodore Catton, and Philip Burnham explore the complex relationship between Indians and national parks, usually resulting in the removal of the natives from their ancestral lands. Burnham points out the irony of George Caitin’s original vision in the 1830s of “a nation’s park” including Indians as part of the protected scene, as instead native Americans have been “considered a nemesis of our national parks.”86 The presence of Indians threatened the symbolic power of these landscapes because they represented a traditional obstacle to the same Western expansion that the national parks idealized, and clouded the ideological casting of parks as entirely natural, unchanging, and unpopulated. John Muir, the best-known preservationist and national park advocate of the time,

exemplifies the general attitude toward Indians. In his essays on the national parks he erases them from the scene, proclaiming that the Indians are all “dead or civilized into useless innocence,” making the parks safe for tourists.87 In Alaska, where he encountered too many local natives to overlook, he suggested that they were uncivilized,

85 Richard White, “‘Are You An Environmentalist or Do You Work For a Living?’: Work and Nature,” in Uncommon Ground: Toward Reinventing Nature, Cronon, ed. (1995), 171-185, at 173. It is worth noting that the Wilderness Act of 1964 specifically defines wilderness, including many parks, as areas “where man is a visitor who does not remain.” Public Law 88-577. 86 Philip Burnham, Indian Country, God’s Country: Native Americans and the National Parks (2000), at 15. 87 Muir (1991), at 21. 83 superstitious and ignorant, and framed them as exotic intruders in the landscape— ignoring the fact that he himself was much more of an exotic.88 Racism combined with the three ideological themes in park idealization to make the presence of Indians completely incompatible with the national parks, necessitating their removal. Part of this bias against Indians living in parks was also a prevailing sense that they were not adequately appreciative of the majestic scenery. Lafayette Bunnell, one of the first whites to explore Yosemite Valley as part of a military campaign, referred to the resident Indians’ reverence of Yosemite Valley as “demonism” rather than the awe that he and his fellow soldiers felt. In his account of the experience he wrote, “In none of their objections made to the abandonment of their home, was there anything said to

indicate any appreciation of the scenery.”89 Because they did not show “proper” aesthetic enjoyment of the view, but instead focused on the plentiful food and shelter of their homeland, they did not deserve to live there.90 Indians were not the only people considered incompatible with national parks, however; all private property holdings seemed problematic. The early experience from Niagara suggested that small-scale private development brought unwanted change, tending to overwhelm the view and counteracting its symbolic power. So, like the Indians before them, private developments needed to be prevented from infringing on the scene, or removed from it, in order for its appearance and meaning to be stabilized and

permanently maintained to meet romanticized expectations. For example, while Yosemite in 1864 was quite isolated from most of the country’s population, and did not become a major tourist draw until some years later, it quickly became clear to park managers that small operators within the parks were not acceptable, as they posed too much of a threat to the protection of such symbolic

88 Catton (1998), at 9. 89 Lafayette Bunnell, Discovery of the Yosemite, and the Indian War of 1851 (1880), cited in Sears (1989), at 152. 90 Note, too, the irony of whites disliking the idea of communally-held Indian land, yet then making the areas into parks owned jointly “by the people”; see Burnham (2000), Chapter 2, for a discussion of this idea. 84 grandeur in perpetuity. Landscape designer Frederick Law Olmstead, writing to the California State Legislature just after the park was established, hailed the Yosemite grant as precluding the possibility “that such scenes might become private property and . . . their value to posterity be injured.”91 His report emphasized that private landowners should not be allowed to monopolize the scenery, making it less accessible to the masses, or degrading its beauty for future users. Two private land claims in Yosemite Valley actually went before the Supreme Court in 1872; the claimants lost, with the Court asserting that the claimants should have known that the “remarkable features of the place” would cause the government to treat these lands differently than ordinary

agricultural lands.92 Public interest in protecting an unchanging symbolic landscape took precedence over their private claims.93 Once established, the NPS continued the early bias against private ownership of any park lands as part of its emphasis on efficient management of the parks. According to Sellars, inholdings with potentially unsightly uses represented the “most pervasive threats of inappropriate development.”94 Secretary Lane released a policy statement in 1918 in the form of a letter to Mather, outlining many of the agency’s founding values and assumptions. The language echoed the Organic Act of 1916, and has come to represent the “basic creed” of the NPS ever since.95 Among other management principles, the Lane letter specified that “all of the private holdings in the national parks

should be eliminated as far as practicable in the course of time either through

91 Olmstead (1952), at 14. 92 Runte Yosemite at 25; case is Hutchings v. Low (1872). Note that neither claim was technically legal, as the area wasn’t yet formally surveyed by the General Land Office at the time that they were filed -- yet the 1868 state district court still decided the case in their favor, only to be overturned by the state supreme court and then upheld by the Supreme Court. In an ironic footnote, in 1874 the California legislature voted to compensate Hutchings, Lamon, and several other claimants for their improvements in the park, and allocated sixty thousand dollars to do so. 93 This public ownership and protection had the effect of institutionalizing one particular meaning for the landscape and preventing others from taking hold. Olwig suggests that the 1868 removal of an orchard in the valley set a precedent for the later ouster of farms in Shenandoah, i.e. removal of the rural cultural landscape in favor of an (artificial) “natural” landscape. Olwig (1995), at 395. 94 Sellars (1997), at 65; he described inholdings as “anathema to the Service.” 95 Ibid. at 56. Also see Albright and Cahn (1985), Chapter 6, “A Creed For the Parks.” Note that the Lane letter was actually penned by Albright, and approved by Mather. 85 congressional appropriation or by donations.”96 Private ownership was still seen as incompatible with efficient management of static scenic wonders, and with the national interest in which the parks were created. Without complete ownership, the NPS would be less able to implement their own designs and management strategies, and feared the repeat of another Niagara-like destruction of the nation’s heritage. But despite this bias against private ownership within existing parks, Congress refused to appropriate money to actually create parks from private lands; appropriations were eventually made to buy out inholders, but new parks had to be carved from federal lands (often from national forests), or donated by private individuals or states.97 Without Congressional support, the NPS relied heavily in its first decade on private donations, most often originating with Mather himself. For example, Mather financed the purchase of the Tioga Road through Yosemite’s back country, personally sponsored the founding of the National Parks Association, and often augmented employees’ salaries in the earliest years of his parks work.98 In this way, the NPS, despite being a federal agency, remained more of a government partnership with private interests, with a majority of its funding coming from wealthy benefactors, who could then wield extended influence over the direction its preservation efforts took.99 This institutional arrangement allowed an elite aesthetic of landscape preservation to continue dominating the parks, one that specifically did not include local residents.

B. Making Parks From Private Lands

Gradually new parks were established by Congress, but they were significantly different from previous ones, in that they were created mostly from privately-owned

96 Albright and Cahn (1985), at 69. 97 Buck (1946), at 45-46. The fact that many parks were created from national forest lands caused continued animosity between the NPS and the U.S. Forest Service. 98 Sellars (1997), at 58-60; also see Albright and Cahn (1985), Chapters 2-5. 99 See Jenks Cameron, The National Park Service: Its History, Activities and Organization (1922), for early detail. 86 lands. However, one problem with private lands was that they were often inhabited by people other than Indians. While park managers had experience working with and around small numbers of inholders, dealing with large numbers of non-native residents was new. The agency’s response stayed in line with its old ideological view that private ownership, particularly that of small holders, was incompatible with park management. As a result, the policy toward residents, no matter how long their communities had been established, was to remove them. The emptied parks could then be transformed into scenic natural areas frozen in time and prepared for the expected influx of tourists, already indoctrinated by the prevailing image of what a national park “ought” to look like. This section of the chapter will briefly review several of these cases, to establish the general pattern of how the NPS’s ideological framework for park management tends to remove residents and reshape the physical landscape to better conform with the romanticized ideal of the national, arrested, natural scene. The first in this trend was Sieur de Monts National Monument on the coast of Maine, established in 1916, then incorporated into Lafayette National Park in 1919 and later renamed as Acadia National Park in 1929. As early as 1901, portions of Mount Desert Island had been purchased by “gentlemen of means,” summer residents who considered the island to be threatened by uncontrolled development for tourists; later

contributions from John D. Rockefeller, Jr. and others added to the protected area.100

The privately-purchased lands were then donated to the federal government for the NPS to manage. Despite the fact that the original impetus for preserving the island was to prevent a Niagara-like destruction of its natural beauty through overdevelopment, Rockefeller then worked closely with the NPS to “build and maintain a road system to open up the lovely vistas of Acadia to viewers.”101 Although private use and

100 The project was first financed by a group including George B. Dorr, a wealthy Bostonian, and Charles W. Eliot, then president of Harvard University; Runte (1987), at 114-115. Eliot then went on to create the first private land trust in the country, The Trustees for Reservation in Boston. 101 Nancy Newhall, A Contribution to the Heritage of Every American: The Conservation Activities of John D. Rockefeller, Jr. (1957), at 49. Also at 56: “A park perfected, stretching from Frenchman Bay to the ocean itself, with roadways opening up its vistas and making its heights accessible to visitors, was the 87 development was seen as distasteful, opening up the area to even great public access through public ownership and development was considered a laudable goal. Grand Teton National Park was first established in Wyoming in 1929 from Forest Service lands, but it was relatively small, covering only the tops of the mountain range.102 Yet efforts were already underway to augment it. In 1926, then-Yellowstone Superintendent Albright developed a plan with Rockefeller to purchase the entire northern portion of the privately-owned Jackson Hole valley with the express purpose of donating the lands to the NPS. Both men were concerned about uncontrolled commercialism encroaching on the view, plus Albright held the conviction that it was the destiny of the Tetons to become part of the National Park System, and considered their

inclusion to be one of the highest priorities of his job.103 For his part, Rockefeller was particularly offended by the apparent “immorality” of some local developments, especially dancehalls, in front of such a sublime natural landscape.104 While their concerns for the Tetons were not identical, they were complementary. Standing in their way, however, were many of the local residents, mostly ranchers, who were interested in having their “pioneer” way of life protected but specifically not by the NPS, which they did not trust. Hence Rockefeller embarked on a plan to buy the valley lands obscured behind a “front organization” called the Snake River Land Company. Both Albright and Rockefeller’s connections with the company were explicitly kept secret, even from the

ambition of John D. Rockefeller, Jr. Quietly buying up land to supplement the areas already given to the Park, he was also thinking of how the roads could be threaded through the hills to blend with the natural features of the landscape and leave no scars. First working out on paper the curves, bridges and overpasses, and then vigilantly following construction on the spot, Mr. Rockefeller worked closely with the engineers, hiring in seasons when work was scarce on the Island and relaxing the pace when other jobs were plentiful. As each unit was completed, it was deeded to the Government as a gift from Mr. Rockefeller.” 102 Ise (1961), at 329 describes this original area as “a stingy, skimpy, niggardly little park of only about 150 square miles, from three to nine miles wide and twenty-seven miles long . . .” 103 Robert W. Righter, Crucible For Conservation: The Creation of Grand Teton National Park (1982), at 31. 104 Alice Wondrak, “Teton Dreams: Horace M. Albright, John D. Rockefeller, Jr., and the Making of the Landscape in Grand Teton National Park” (1997), unpublished manuscript on file with author. 88 man enlisted as purchasing agent, in order to prevent inflation of land prices.105 By the time their involvement was finally revealed in 1930, the land company had purchased over 25,000 acres, provoking local outcries of trickery and prompting a congressional investigation into possible wrongdoing. Eventually Rockefeller donated a total of 34,000 acres to the NPS to create an unpopulated vista framing the majestic mountains in the distance.106 Jackson Hole went from being a working landscape filled with vestiges of human history and utility to a static monument of natural scenery.107 Shenandoah National Park in Virginia and Great Smoky Mountains National Park in North Carolina and Tennessee also followed this model of establishment, but relied mostly on state condemnation of private lands for acquisition (although private donations also provided a significant portion of the funding). When authorized in 1926, the proposed boundaries for each encircled historic mountain communities of small farms. Yet for the most part, they were not seen as obstacles to creating the parks; in fact, in the early planning stages of the parks they were mostly overlooked. Promoters of Shenandoah, primarily politicians and business leaders, described it as “primeval wilderness,” despite its centuries-long history of farms, plantations and logging operations, and this pristine imagery proved too powerful to be successfully challenged.108 The State of Virginia even passed a law allowing blanket condemnation

105 Righter (1982), at 49-50. The purchasing agent, Robert E. Miller, was a local rancher and banker, as well as former Supervisor of the Teton National Forest, and was “bitterly opposed to Albright and the National Park Service designs on the Teton Range-Jackson Hole area.” He apparently was suspicious the lands he was purchasing were somehow involved with NPS plans for expansion into the area, but when he asked the Land Company about it he “received assurance that the land purchase program was not related to the park extension effort.” 106 He also donated $6 million in 1952 to the Jackson Hole Preserve for the construction of a hotel and cottages near Jackson Lake, adding to the development of the area specifically for tourists. Newhall (1957), at 110. 107 Wondrak points out that according to Albright and Rockefeller’s visions of the Tetons, “In order to allow these places to fulfill their potential as glorious natural landscapes, messy traces of historical human intervention needed to be removed; even if it had been that human intervention which had made the landscape accessible to viewers and shaped the view in the first place.” 108 When the Shenandoah proposal was still competing with that for Great Smoky Mountains, North Carolina newspapers refuted this claim, and noted that 15,000 people would be displaced by the creation of Shenandoah with its originally planned boundary—yet this fact didn’t come up at the Congressional hearings. The project idea also got considerable support early on from Stephen Mather himself, who 89 suits to be brought against all of the landowners in the eight counties affected, rather than addressing the cases individually.109 A similar effort was made in the Smokies, described as “almost untouched wilderness.”110 Private individuals challenged the legality of the use of eminent domain in both parks, but failed in each case.111 A total of 465 families in Shenandoah and 110 in the Smokies were removed, mostly in the early 1930s. Once vacated, most of the homes were razed or burned to prevent others from moving in. Early management involved an emphasis on “a quick ‘return to nature’ while also cleaning up the landscape and preparing to receive visitors in large numbers.”112 It is interesting to note that the southern mountain people were stereotyped by more mainstream cultural influences in very similar ways to the Indians before them. Durwood Dunn, writing about the Cades Cove community in the Smokies, notes two distinct literary trends starting in the 1880s: one depicted southern mountaineers “as living lives of stark brutality and desperation,” while the other hailed them as “the last vestige of ‘pure’ Anglo-Saxon Americans living an existence far superior to their fellow Americans in a nation beset by the complications of burgeoning industrialization, urbanization, and an influx of ‘un-American” foreign immigrants.”113 This allowed park promoters to believe that the residents’ removal from the park areas was actually in their

particularly wanted a park close to the nation’s capital; Darwin Lambert, The Undying Past of Shenandoah National Park (1989), at 194, 202. 109 Ibid. at 216. The legislation, passed in 1928, was called the Public Park Condemnation Act. 110 Durwood Dunn identifies the primary motive of promoters to be profit and national prestige; one prominent spokesman, Colonel Chapman, even went so far as to specify that greater “advertising and prestige” would result from the area becoming a national park rather than a national forest. Durwood Dunn, Cades Cove: The Life and Death of A Southern Appalachian Community, 1818-1937 (1988), at 242- 3. Also see Carlos Campbell, Birth of A National Park in the Great Smoky Mountains (1960), written by one of the principle players in that park movement, for the promoter’s perspective. 111 In the Great Smokies case, the most critical legal question was “whether one sovereignty, the state of Tennessee, could exercise the power of eminent domain to secure land for the public use of another sovereignty, the federal government.” The original judge found that it could not, but the Tennessee State Supreme Court rejected that decision. Dunn (1988), at 249. 112 Lambert (1989), at 223. Note the author was one of the first employees at Shenandoah National Park. Also see Justin Reich, “Re-Creating the Wilderness: Shaping Narratives and Landscapes in Shenandoah National Park,” Environmental History 6(1):95-117 (2001). 113 Dunn (1988), at xiii. Note similar observation in Lambert (1989), at 171: “Romanticists considered them noble primitives or dangerous barbarians. Missionary-educators thought they were ‘lost sheep.’ Sociologists and social workers were sure they needed ‘help.’” 90 best interest, whether they wanted to go or not. In doing so, they overlooked the fact that these people were losing their homes and livelihoods in the midst of the Great Depression, when jobs and productive farms were scarce. Also, the fabric of their communities, which might have helped them through difficult times in the past, was completely destroyed, even for those few allowed to remain in the parks for some time.114 Particularly hard-hit were tenant farmers, making up substantial portions of the residents evicted from both parks, who owned no land and therefore received no compensation or assistance. One particularly troubling aspect of the creation of these parks was the apparent deception involved in the process of removing people from some of them, particularly Teton and the Great Smoky Mountains. In Teton, while many of the locals willingly sold their land, they likely would have been less willing had they known the truth about both

the buyer and the purpose for which the land was intended.115 In the case of the Smokies, locals expressed concerns about being included inside the boundary after the park was originally proposed in the early 1920s, and in fact several communities on its fringes successfully lobbied to be excluded in the final proposal. But the community of Cades Cove remained inside the park. Numerous politicians, including the Governor and a Senator, and Knoxville organizers explicitly promised that the residents would not lose their homes.116 Despite these assurances, the bill passed by the state of Tennessee in

114 Lambert notes the existence of a “secret list” of “aged and especially meritous” residents who were allowed to stay in the park until the end of their lives. The list had 43 people on it in 1934, chosen by “personal situation and ‘merit,’ recommended by Will Carson and approved by Ickes.” The last of these people died in 1979. Lambert (1989), at 254. 115 Although the prices paid for the land were considered fair at the time, many of the ranchers who sold their property felt in retrospect that they had been treated unfairly, given the vast contrast in income between Rockefeller and the struggling ranchers and homesteaders. That it was a collusion between the NPS, a federal agency, and eastern wealth particularly earned their ire and resentment. Righter (1982), at 66-67. Campbell (1960) at 19 also raises issue of how much should be paid for the land; all the promotional efforts for Great Smoky Mountains convinced the locals that their land was worth more than they’d previously thought, and they then refused to sell unless high prices were met—which in turn justified the need for condemnation. 116 Dunn writes: “Although it is evident that park promoters intended to include Cades Cove within park boundaries almost from the beginning of the movement, they launched an elaborate campaign to assure cove citizens that their homes and farms would never be molested.” Every major group brought to see the 91 1927 “specifically gave the newly created Park Commission the power to seize homes within the proposed boundaries by right of eminent domain.”117 Had the Cove residents brought political pressure to bear before 1927, they might well have altered the outcome, but they had no way of knowing it was necessary. These cases and others form a larger pattern of a somewhat cavalier disregard for local concerns in the process of creating parks. Like in the 1872 Yosemite land claim case, the residents seem expected to agree that their homes ought to be given up so as to serve a greater public purpose as a park, and simply leave without complaint. They also give historical evidence that later residents in parks might have good reason to be mistrustful of the NPS. The Blue Ridge Parkway represents a break from this model of park creation, but still retains some parallels.118 Connecting Shenandoah and the Smokies, the scenic roadway was conceived of as a “make-work” project in the mid-1930s. Forming a narrow boulevard winding nearly 500 miles through the mountains, the Parkway was engineered and constructed by the NPS using local unemployed labor under the provisions of the National Recovery Act. Again, the mountain people were considered to be isolated, poor, and leading “anachronistic” lives, and the Parkway was conceived of as a way to provide jobs, better transportation and a boost to local economies “without appearing to be charity.”119 In deliberate contrast to Shenandoah, the NPS wanted to retain the traditional residents and their uses of the land as “physical evidence of a

pioneer way of life,” adding to the scenic qualities of the roadway.120 Rather than purchasing all of the land required for the road, the Federal government wanted property

proposed park site was taken to the Cove, yet “Campbell and others reiterated over and over their promise that private homes would not be taken over by the proposed park.” Dunn (1988), at 243. 117 Ibid. at 246. 118 It is also worth noting that, unlike the others mentioned here, Blue Ridge Parkway was not a National Park, but rather an area intended primarily for recreation, which had lower expectations of significance and management; this may explain the divergence from the general pattern. In contrast, both Big Bend National Park (1935) and later Virgin Islands National Park (1956) stuck to the usual model of removing residents to create an uninhabited natural landscape. 119 Harley E. Jolley, The Blue Ridge Parkway (1969), at 50-53. The mountain people were also considered “fertile and prolific,” and Jolley suggests that “Such increases were proportionally much greater than the ability of the soil properly to sustain them; thus, squalor and misery continued to multiply.” 120 Ibid. at 130. This perhaps reflects the NPS’s greater involvement with historic resources at this time. 92 owners to donate a 200-foot strip of their property to provide the right-of-way, with the justification that it would enhance their own property values. In response, both the States of Virginia and North Carolina passed laws allowing them to procure the rights-of-way with little consultation or agreement from the owners.121 Beyond the right-of-way, the land still belonged to the private owners, but scenic easements were requested to ensure protection of the natural setting. Yet the term scenic easement was not always well understood by those involved, particularly the degree of control they granted the federal government. Owners were expected to continue their customary uses of the land, but with extensive rules about what building and farming practices could take place, plus prohibitions against “unsightly or offensive material,

such as sawdust, ashes, trash, or junk.”122 Specifically land owners were encouraged to make their land as scenic as possible, through the practice of “scientific farming,” construction of rail fences (the NPS provided free rails), or shocking grain crops into neat stacks, even if these were not their traditional practices. Jolley writes that The remarkable success of the land management program is not as evident as that of the engineer for the simple reason that the scenes along the parkway, whether they incorporate a rail fence, a field with neat rows of corn shocks, a field of cabbage, or a field of tobacco, are so ‘natural’ that the passerby little dreams of the great amount of effort exerted to make

that scene possible and to keep it, or its equivalent, available for future generations.123 While policies for creating the Parkway did not remove the residents outright, as did most of the other parks of this period, they were still not sensitive to the local culture.

121 North Carolina passed a law in 1935 stating that just by mapping and posting in counties which rights- of-way lands it wanted, the state automatically became possessor of that land. Private owners could then accept offer of compensation or file suit for damages. In the meantime, the state could proceed with construction. Similarly, in Virginia, the State Assembly gave State Highway Commission power “to procure the land as it would for any state road,” which would then be transferred to the Federal government. Jolley (1969) at 104-5. 122 Ibid. at 103. 123 Ibid. at 132. 93 Instead, the NPS demanded that it take a more aesthetically pleasing form, which was then “naturalized” into the scene, eradicating the actual historical use practices of the area. In this way, the values of the agency were physically inscribed in the landscape, despite their lack of direct ownership. Supported by the financial power of elite individuals, the NPS developed what became some of its most popular parks during this period. These cases show the influence and personal visions of the wealthy steering the national parks more directly than ever, while the much poorer rural residents were either removed or their ways of life heavily controlled. Despite a long history of having lived and worked in these places, these people and their traditional practices were considered incompatible with the parks’ purposes and management.124 In actuality, they only were incompatible with the underlying values of the agency. As Cronon points out, “Only people whose relation to the land was already alienated could hold up wilderness as a model for human life in nature, for the romantic ideology of wilderness leaves precisely nowhere for human beings actually to make their living on the land.”125

C. New Model of Parks

By the 1960s and ‘70s, many of the new NPS units were specifically aimed to provide greater access to recreation opportunities, particularly within proximity to heavily populated areas. These included the early National Recreation Areas, reservoirs jointly managed by the NPS and the Bureau of Reclamation. Also considered as recreation areas were the System’s Parkways, intended for “recreational motoring,” and the National Seashores, established to provide public beach access as well as shoreline

124 Although note that residents not only considered incompatible with “natural” parks – example of Jefferson National Expansion Memorial in 1940, where they purchased 40 blocks of riverfront property, moving out the (mostly poor) residents, and then razed most of the historic buildings to commemorate the Louisiana Purchase. See Hosmer (1981), at 626-637. 125 Cronon (1995), at 80. 94 conservation. The agency actually conducted its Seashore Recreation Survey back in the 1930s, which identified twelve major sections of coastal lands that warranted protection. The first, Cape Hatteras, was authorized in 1937, but land acquisition did not take place until substantial grants from the Mellon family and the State of North Carolina provided funding for purchase. It was eventually joined in 1962 by Cape Cod in Massachusetts, Point Reyes in California, and Padre Island in Texas.126 Interestingly, any residents in these parks were for the most part left in place, although under differing land acquisition strategies.127 Some have suggested that as land prices increased with the booming economy, full-fee acquisition became less appealing, and the NPS began to rely more on private land use regulation as an alternative

management tool.128 Cape Cod is considered the “model” of this approach, where the NPS acquired key tracts of undeveloped land within park boundaries, but permitted continued private ownership of improved property subject to federal zoning regulations administered by local governments.129 Condemnation became the “hammer” to enforce the zoning laws; if a landowner did not comply, the NPS had the authority to take the property through eminent domain. Clearly, this allowed the NPS to achieve their protection goals at considerably less cost than outright acquisition.130 Yet Cape Cod has not proven to be a universally-followed model, as few parks established since then have taken a similar approach to allowing private residents to remain in the landscape. As we

126 Barry Mackintosh, The National Parks: Shaping the System (1985), at 53-57. There are now a total of ten National Seashores. 127 1959 has been established by the NPS as the official cut-off date between “old” and “new” parks, with different land acquisition policies for each side of the divide. Revised Land Acquisition Policy, 44 Fed. Reg. 24,790, 24,792 (1979). 128 See Joseph L. Sax, “Buying Scenery: Land Acquisitions for the National Park Service,” Duke Law Journal (1980):709-740, for a discussion of these questions. 129 The Conservation Foundation described the thinking of the time: “From the start, people recognized that the Cape Cod they wanted to preserve included the picturesque homes and villages and other remains of early settlers and ways of life in the distinctive landscape. . . The idea was to retain a ‘living landscape’.” The Conservation Foundation, National Parks for a New Generation: Visions, Realities, Prospects (1985), at 161. Also see Joseph L. Sax, “Helpless Giants: The National Parks and the Regulation of Private Lands,” Michigan Law Review 75:239-274 (1976); and John Peter Wargo, Ecosystem Preservation Policy (1984). 130 However, cost does not seem to have been a serious obstacle to land acquisition for many cases following this, including Redwood National Park in 1968, which ultimately cost over $500 million. 95 will see in the following chapter, Point Reyes started out looking like it would follow the Cape Cod model, but ended up more like the earlier models of Teton and Shenandoah. In the last three decades or so, NPS priorities have shifted toward providing parks for increasingly urban populations and to protecting both natural and cultural resources against destruction. These new types of parks, frequently created by direct purchase of privately-owned lands, often include human settlements and their historic uses of the land. Increasingly, the cultural meanings of the landscape—both to the local inhabitants and to the nation as a whole, often as a historical reminder of “traditional” ways of life— have become a prime focus of preservation and management efforts. This represents a significant change from previous types of parks, becoming less compatible with the ingrained NPS ideologies of unchanging, nationally symbolic, scenic natural heritage. Hence, protecting such inhabited landscapes presents a problem: the cultural and natural qualities of these areas have developed over time through the changing social processes and characteristics of the residents’ daily lives, yet such dynamic social forces may not fit the Service's conception of what “should” be allowed within a protected landscape.

IV. NPS Treatment Of Historic And Cultural Resources

Despite its traditional bias toward iconic natural scenery, the National Park System does include a multitude of park units where human history and culture is the primary focus of preservation. This raises the question, how does the NPS reconcile these places with its underlying ideological themes? This section will review the development of historic preservation in the NPS, and concludes that the three themes still prevail; despite its prevalence, history takes back seat to nature, emphasizes national importance, and is interpreted as static and unchanging. Even recent developments like

96 the national-level Cultural Landscape program tends to create an arrested landscape of national importance, and faces strong bias within the agency itself toward eliminating human history and culture in favor of emphasizing natural resources.

A. Development of Historic Preservation in the NPS

For the field of historic preservation, as well as for the Park Service in general, the 1930s represent a key turning point. Primarily through the interest of Horace Albright, the NPS became the federal agency to take on this new role, expanding its scope beyond just protecting scenic wonders and providing recreational opportunities.131 NPS historian Everhart suggests that, although almost no other conservationists at the time had any interest in historic preservation, Albright believed that: American heritage was made up in equal parts the unique grandeur of the geography and the heroic deeds of the people, it was just as important to preserve historic sites as to set aside places of natural beauty. Both were essential components of true conservation.132 However, note that in Everhart’s first edition (1972), he instead wrote that the “conservation movement had not yet accepted the mission of historic preservation (one sometimes wonders if it ever will), and in those days there was little more than

131 Previously, other than protecting memorial battlefields, almost all historic preservation that had been done in the U.S. had been accomplished by private individuals or groups. However, by the early 1930s the sense of preservation responsibility was shifting from private philanthropy toward the federal government—as were many other social programs as part of the New Deal. Rather than being an exclusive interest of the wealthy elite, historic preservation in the U.S. was experiencing a growing public enthusiasm, for several reasons. Changes in the American landscape stemming from industrialization, urbanization and the increasing popularity of automobiles suggested to some that all traces of the historical past would soon be paved over, and resulted in calls for protection of some representative pieces of “preindustrial America”; Hosmer (1981), at 3. In addition, history served to shape a kind of patriotic nationalism, as a way of both educating new immigrants of an idealized collective “American” past, and emphasizing national loyalty during times of war and economic troubles. This understanding of history was deeply nostalgic, reflecting on the life of the past as an “antidote for the materialistic ills of the present.” Charles B. Hosmer, Jr., Presence of the Past: A History of the Preservation Movement in the United States Before Williamsburg, (1965), at 299. 132 William C. Everhart, The National Park Service, second edition (1983), at 22. 97 ceremonial respect for historic sites….”133 In other words, genuine acceptance of historic preservation as an NPS role is only fairly recent, and may still be only grudging in places. In 1933 the Interior Department was reorganized by Presidential order under the new Roosevelt administration, giving the NPS jurisdiction over all of the national parks, monuments and cemeteries formerly administered by the War Department and the Forest Service.134 Congress followed suit in late 1933 by establishing the Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS), employing many of out-of-work architects and draftsmen to

create a huge architectural archive, documenting historic buildings. 135 The primary rationale for this kind of program was that the buildings themselves were not, for the most part, high priorities for preservation; because they were not worth physically saving, HABS recorded their particulars on paper, thus clearing the way for their eventual removal. Yet the new roles of the federal government in historic preservation did not end there. In February 1935, Senator Byrd (VA) proposed a bill “to provide for the preservation of historic American sites, buildings, objects, and antiquities of national importance.”136 The bill passed with little discussion and was signed as the Historic Sites and Buildings Act on July 21, 1935. While the Act did not provide any authorization to the NPS to create new historical parks, it directed the agency to survey nationally historic sites and to work cooperatively toward their preservation with other units of government and private

133 William C. Everhart, The National Park Service, first edition (1972), at 29. 134 Executive Order 6166, Section 2. In addition, the NPS received jurisdiction for some things it did not want, such as the Fine Arts Commission and the National Capital Park and Planning Commission, Arlington National Cemetery, and all District of Columbia parks and buildings; the executive order also changed the name of the agency to the Office of National Parks, Buildings, and Reservations. The NPS eventually managed to drop the extra responsibilities it did not want, as well as got its original name back. 135 Hosmer (1981), at 549-56. HABS was made into a permanent program in July 1934, with headquarters and organizing staff housed within the NPS, and the American Institute of Architects (AIA) providing field organization. 136 S. 2073, 74 Cong. 1 Sess. Stat. 49, at 666. Hosmer (1981) notes at 572 that much debate over bill turned on question of whether the government would be able to confiscate property so as to create National Historic Sites. 98 citizens.137 In 1935 the Branch of Historic Sites and Buildings was formally established within the NPS, and the agency organized the Historic Sites Survey to create an inventory of nationally important historic places, and to recommend sites illustrating significant historical themes in the American past for inclusion in the Park System. These actions were soon followed by the creation, as mandated by the Historic Sites Act, of an Advisory Board on National Parks, Historic Sites Buildings and Monuments, comprised of distinguished scientists and long-time park enthusiasts. Soon they were inundated with proposals for preservation projects.138 By determining whether or not proposed parks had sufficient national significance, the Board served as a buffer between the NPS and both the public and Congress, protecting the agency from political pressures that might have involved the NPS with areas representing social controversy. For example, following an Advisory Board recommendation, a list of places sent in 1937 to the NPS regional offices for study under the Historic Sites Survey intentionally omitted “all sites of contemporary or near contemporary nature which might lead to controversial

questions.”139 Places undergoing cultural change or contestation were not seen as deserving attention, both because of the NPS’s traditional emphasis on the static preservation of nationally agreed-upon heritage, but also because of the agency’s self- image as apolitical and scientific.140 These early criteria for determining suitability for preservation also formed the basis of all historic preservation regulations today.

137 James A. Glass, The Beginnings of a New National Historic Preservation Program, 1957 to 1969 (1990), at xiii. 138 Hosmer (1981), at 585. Of the requests, 57% came from Congress, 38% from NPS offices, remainder from state or private historical agencies (from 1936 letter from Cammerer to Ickes), ibid. at 592. 139 Barry Mackintosh, The Historic Sites Survey and National Historic Landmarks Program: A History (1984), at 81. 140 Such a stance was hardly convincing, though: “When explaining the national historic landmarks program in connection with controversial sites, the Service regularly contended that landmark designation constituted a neutral recognition of historical importance rather than an ‘honoring’ of the subject involved. In reality, the idea that designation entailed a degree of honoring could not be so easily dismissed. The Service’s leaflet describing the program spoke of landmarks as ‘among the most treasured’ tangible reminders of the nation’s history. The homes of unmitigated scoundrels, however great their influence, were not made landmarks (unless justified on architectural grounds). . . . And while the moral neutrality of a mere listing of sites might have been credible, it was difficult for the general public not to view the bronze plaque as a sign of official sanction or approval.” Mackintosh (1984) at 84; emphasis added. 99 Despite these advances of historic preservation in the NPS, the so-called “cannonball circuit” of historic parks still played somewhat of a “second fiddle” to the big scenic nature parks. Historians were a recent addition to the Service, and did not garner the same credibility in the agency as professions like landscape architects, engineers, or rangers. Staff in the historical parks were not connected to the agency’s career advancement ladder; in order to get into the upper ranks, they first had to go work in the parks emphasizing scenic nature. Similarly, outside interest groups focused on natural issues were far more active, less narrowly focused and less ephemeral than those groups concerned with history.141 In addition, historians and archeologists working for the NPS were often looked down upon by academics in their own disciplines: Mackintosh writes, “Then as later, the field was depreciated among academic historians as the province of antiquarians interested in old things for their own sake.”142 Thus they held outsider status both within their disciplines and within the agency itself. In line with the tradition of viewing parks as iconic monuments, the past represented in NPS historic sites tended to be presented as static and unchanging. Other factors contributed to this trend as well. Hosmer notes that the “emphasis on military parks and sites that illustrated various themes in American history meant the Park Service would perpetuate the museum aspects of preservation.”143 By categorizing sites as representational of certain historical themes, NPS staff fixed the meaning of the site within a certain historical period and context, not allowing alternate interpretations. Also, in determining which historic sites were worthy of inclusion in the system, NPS staff did not have clear criteria by which to measure. They would consider both the state of the material remnants and the events in question in their analysis, but in some cases had only one or the other, and often the “correct” interpretation was not clear.144 And yet

141 Ronald A. Foresta, America's National Parks and Their Keepers (1984), at 132. 142 Mackintosh (1984), at 11.. 143 Hosmer (1981), at 580. 144 See Foresta (1984), at 131. 100 they felt compelled to provide the public with clear, factual information regarding the sites; Hosmer notes that “Once historians could function under the mandate of the 1935 act, they took their responsibilities seriously, almost to the point of looking on themselves as guardians of the national culture.”145 The combination of this attitude with the lack of clear criteria for preservation and the tendency to categorize sites all contributed to the static nature of their interpretation.

B. Post-War Historic Preservation

During the 1950s, with the growing number and importance of historical parks, suggestions were occasionally made that there should be a separate bureau for them. Critics noted that historical and scenic (or “natural”) parks required different kinds of management, and in trying to meet these different needs the NPS was “growing extraordinarily complicated and bureaucratic, to the point of unweildiness.”146 However, deciding which parks should be categorized as scenic rather than historical was complicated—almost all the parks had some aspects of each—and the question remained of where to place the recreation areas, often neither particularly scenic nor historic. So the historical parks stayed within the NPS, yet remained somewhat outside of the mainstr eam of the agency, considered somewhat peripheral to the main concerns of providing scenic recreation. There was also an increasing sense nation-wide during this time that many historical resources were being lost to urban development. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, the US was in the midst of a building boom; much of this activity, such as highway construction and urban renewal projects, was publicly funded, making protection of historic sites an increasingly federal concern.147 In addition, the

145 Hosmer (1981), at 929. 146 Ise (1961),at 532. 147 Foresta (1984), at 132. Also see Glass (1990) at 4 for specific Acts causing all the destruction. 101 preservation movement was changing, seeking to preserve architectural and aesthetic values as well as historical elements. Increasingly preservationists were endorsing the adaptation of historic structures to ‘living,’ contemporary uses as the best means of preservation. Activists were redefining historic preservation in terms of environmental conservation. The movement was changing swiftly, and the Park Service was losing touch with current ideas outside the federal government.148 The late 1950s brought a revival of the Historic Sites Survey and HABS, both of which had languished since WWII. A new series of historical theme studies began in the late 1950s, and in 1960 the NPS established a Registry of National Historic Landmarks, to recognize important sites and structures identified by the Survey but not administered by the park bureau. This landmarks program was intended to promote preservation, but had no enforcement power to stop private owners from altering or demolishing landmarks. In 1964 a presidential task force recommended the establishment of a program, drafted by NPS staff, to provide federal loans and matching grants to state and local governments for historic preservation, as well as tax deductions for private property owners who would participate in the effort. The grants would allow the states to survey historic sites of regional or local significance, based on the standards and procedures used by the Historic Sites Survey in inventorying properties of national significance. Each state would then “prepare a comprehensive, statewide preservation plan drawn from the results of the survey.”149 President Johnson endorsed this approach in February 1965, and soon after the Special Committee on Historic Preservation (also known as the Rains Committee), sponsored by the United States Conference of Mayors, released its report,

148 Glass (1990), at 9. 149 Ibid. at 10. 102 titled With Heritage So Rich, to publicize the issue.150 The report called for a “new preservation” that would be integrated with, rather than isolated from, contemporary life; “we must be concerned with the total heritage of the nation and all that is worth preserving from our past as a living part of the present.”151 In October 1966 Johnson signed result of these efforts, the National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA), utilizing the language of “new preservation” from With Heritage So Rich.152 The NHPA specifically called for the creation and maintenance of what would become known as the National Register of Historic Places,153 for evaluating sites for possible inclusion on the Register, as well as administering grants to the states and the

National Trust for their preservation programs.154 Responsibility for the Register was given to the NPS, as well as the authority to make grants to state and local governments for carrying out inventory efforts.155 The Service would also publish and distribute the

150 The Committee was funded by the Ford Foundation to “visit Europe to examine preservation activities abroad and produce a report presenting the need for preservation in the United States.” In late October and early November 1965 they visited eight European countries with notable records in preservation. “It soon became clear that the national governments in Europe had assumed the principle responsibility for preserving and restoring their physical heritage.” The Committee convinced that “Private enterprise alone could not afford to preserve the historic features of American cities.” Ibid. 151 National Trust For Historic Preservation, With Heritage So Rich, second edition (1983), at 207-8; emphasis is mine. 152 Specifically the Act’s preamble states that “the historical and cultural foundations of the Nation should be preserved as a living part of our community life and development in order to give a sense of orientation to the American people.” l80 Stat. 915. Glass (1990) at 17 notes that the Johnson administration, the NPS and the Rains Committee were all seeking legislation for different reasons: “The administration desired to encourage a popular activity through grants to the states. The Park Service wanted to enhance its position in the preservation movement through a grants-in-aid program. The Rains Committee was seeking primarily to curb destructive actions by federal agencies.” During 1966 all three worked to have their own objectives emphasized in legislation. 153 The name was not officially mandated by the statute itself; the NPS began referring to the register by this name in mid-1968, and Congress made it the legal name in the 1980 amendments to the Act. Barry Mackintosh, The National Historic Preservation Act and the National Park Service: A History (1986), at 21. 154 The 1976 NHPA amendments established a Historic Preservation Fund (HPF), providing matching grants to states and the National Trust; the money comes from outer continental shelf oil leases, similar to the Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF). 155 The NPS also needed to sort out who within the agency would administer the new preservation program. A special committee appointed in May of 1966 to consider NPS’s existing responsibilities and anticipated responsibilities under the pending Act particularly noted a traditional bias within NPS against historic resources. At the time NPS staff working on various aspects of historic resources were “subdivided and fragmented under four of the six Assistant Directors.” Report of Special Committee on Historic Preservation (1966), at 2. The Committee recommended that the historic branch be made autonomous within the agency, consolidating all the professional staffs in history, archeology, and historic 103 National Register, in addition to administering matching grants to public agencies for acquisition and preservation, a federal loan program for people wanting to acquire and rehabilitate historic properties, and tax relief measures. The 1976 Tax Reform Act added tax credits for rehabilitating historic buildings; according to Mackintosh, the result of this was that “preservation became very much part of the economic development mainstream.”156

C. National Register Criteria

The National Register, the core of all NHPA programs and processes, already existed in an embryonic form as the historic sites survey and national historic landmarks, established under the authority of the Historic Sites Act. The NHPA formalized and expanded the Register, and importantly, it added coverage of “properties of less-than- national significance.”157 The NPS did not follow the suggestion of the Rains Committee in categorizing listings by type of significance (i.e. national, regional or local) for fear that properties without high local ratings would be targeted for redevelopment. Nor were the new rules for the Register particularly innovative: Pressed by a tight schedule, the task force did relatively little research on the ways in which existing programs of survey, registration, and planning

were conducted at the state or municipal levels. Instead, the historians who made up most of the group relied on criteria and procedures with which they were already familiar, principally the criteria for historical significance used in the Historic Sites Survey of the Park Service and

architecture, but that was not done. Instead the Office of Archeology and Historic Preservation (OAHP) was established supervise the new preservation activities. 156 Mackintosh (1986), at 74. 157 Mackintosh (1984), at 21. Note that nationally significant properties were already covered by the 1935 Act. 104 administrative procedures already developed by the Bureau of Outdoor Recreation.158 Yet these rules now shape all cultural and historic resource management. In order to be protected by the NPS, all landscapes must be eligible for listing on the National Register of Historic Places, by applying its criteria to landscape components, use patterns, and structures.159 The first guidelines published by the NPS for applying these criteria was Robert Melnick's 1984 manual for identifying, evaluating and managing cultural landscapes, defined as rural historic districts160. This was primarily intended to provide tools for park managers to deal with sites already within the National Park System, but could be applied to sites on non-NPS lands as well. This report was the culmination of a project started within the NPS in 1980 to develop guidelines for the identification and management of such landscapes, as there was an overall concern within the NPS that “significant portions of our national heritage were being lost.”161 By setting out these detailed guidelines and management options, the NPS hoped “to avoid a problem that has occurred in the past: the nondecision,”162 i.e. allowing deterioration of landscapes, either through neglect, or through alteration with the intent of returning the area to its “natural” character.

158 Glass (1990), at 25. In preparation for Senate hearings on the proposed NHPA, Chief Historian Robert M. Utley prepared a report describing how NPS would administer the preservation program. “As a suggestion of the kind of criteria that could be used in such a program, Utley attached to the prospectus a copy of the twelve conditions used by the Park Service’s Historic Sites Survey to evaluate national historic significance.” After the Act was signed, the NPS formed a Historic Preservation Task Force to define the register; this Task Force agreed to follow Utley’s idea. Glass (1990), at 18, 24. 159 For details on how a landscape is identified and evaluated, refer to Appendix A. 160 Robert Z. Melnick, with Daniel Sponn and Emma Jane Saxe, Cultural Landscapes: Rural Historic Districts in the National Park System (1984). Note that this was published eighteen years after the National Register guidelines were approved by Congress; it is not clear how, or if, landscape protection or management was done prior to this publication. 161 Ibid. at 7. Also see Melody Webb, “Cultural Landscapes in the National Park Service,” The Public Historian 9(2):77-89 (1987), for more detail on the initial interest in the NPS regarding cultural landscapes. 162 Ibid. at 10. The overall project became the national Cultural Landscapes Program, which will be discussed later in this chapter. 105 Melnick's manual was updated in 1987 by the publication of National Register Bulletin #30.163 The definition of a historic rural landscape district, carried over to Bulletin #30, is “a geographically definable area, possessing a significant concentration, linkage, or continuity of landscape components which are united by human use and past events or aesthetically by plan or physical development.”164 The manual specifically does not apply to “historic sites, scenes or landscapes,” because other policies and guidelines address these, nor does it apply to what Melnick refers to as “socio-cultural landscapes,” characterized by “the use of contemporary peoples.”165 It contains a glossary of terms as an appendix, but it can be difficult to distinguish one type of landscape from another. The definitions of these various types of landscapes (cultural, historic, rural, socio-cultural) are often vague and overlapping, leaving the determination of which kind of landscape one is dealing somewhat open to interpretation.166 Clearly, however, Melnick is referring only to a certain subset of the possible landscapes within parks; for example, areas containing tourist shops or campgrounds would not be included

163 Linda Flint McClelland, J. Timothy Keller, Genevieve Keller and Robert Z. Melnick, "Guidelines for Evaluating and Documenting Rural Historic Landscapes," National Register Bulletin 30 (1987). 164 Melnick (1984), at 8. Melnick includes a brief discussion about how the specific terminology of "rural historic district" was chosen. Early in the project the term was simply "historic landscapes", but that was abandoned as it became clear to the participants that "we were dealing with more than historic landscapes associated with an important individual, designer, or discrete historic period." "Historic scene" was rejected for being too view-oriented, "vernacular landscape" was considered too vague and esoteric. "Socio-cultural landscape" seemed to have "implications of the intangible", and "cultural landscape" was considered too broad a term. "Rural historic districts" was chosen to reflect the rural nature of the areas they wanted to address, as well as show the "direct connections to the National Register process." 165 Ibid. at 1 (definition at 67). What he called socio-cultural landscapes are now termed ethnographic landscapes, but it is not always clear how to distinguish between these and “rural historic” landscapes. The main difference is the perspective from which the landscape is viewed. Ethnographic landscapes are those viewed through the eyes of a specific culture, and mirror their systems of meaning, ideology, belief, and so on, while rural historic districts may be the same places but viewed from an outside perspective. See Donald L. Hardesty, “Ethnographic Landscapes: Transforming Nature into Culture,” in Preserving Cultural Landscapes in America, Arnold R. Alanen and Robert Z. Melnick, eds. (2000). Because ethnographic landscapes are managed by an entirely different branch of the NPS than other cultural landscapes (one focused more specifically on anthropology), this determination can cause substantial differences in management approaches. 166 Melnick’s definition of a cultural landscape is as follows: "a geographic area, including both natural and cultural resources, including the wildlife or domestic animals therein, that has been influenced by or reflects human activity or was the background for an event or person significant to human history," Melnick (1984), at 66. 106 in his criteria. Park visitors, commercial or industrial interests, and current-day residents are distinctly left out of the definitions or designations of meaningful landscapes. The goal of protecting these rural landscapes is described as “to maintain, through management and, perhaps, preservation of individual landscape components, the essential historic character of the district.”167 Each district is required to have one or more designated periods of historic significance, which become the benchmark for measuring whether subsequent changes contribute to or alter its historic integrity. Similarly, one or more areas of significance, or “historic themes,” must be identified for the district according to the National Register's requirements. In this way, the interpretation of that particular landscape becomes frozen within a particular historic framework; if it changes too radically from that period, it may lose its eligibility under the National Register criteria. However, neither Melnick's manual nor Bulletin #30 have specific instructions for how to select among the myriad possible periods of historic significance. Nor do they suggest that historical significance could be considered from different points of view. It appears that this crucial decision, pegging the landscape with a single, fixed meaning from “our” undifferentiated history, is left up to the individual park manager to decide with little more than vague guidance. Also, the NRHP requirements about historic integrity bias protection toward places that are “pure” or “well preserved,” which are usually not the areas that have been the sites of struggle. Any changes or modifications in the architecture or structures from a historic period, as often occurs when different groups exert contesting claims over an area, simply render the property ineligible for listing, rather than prompting investigation into why different groups were contesting use or meaning. The requirements continue a strong rural bias, as well; because urban areas are usually subject to more visible forces of change, they are less likely to qualify for protections than more isolated rural sites, regardless of the degree or significance of cultural meaning that may be involved.

167 Ibid. at 10. 107 Landscape historian Catherine Howett suggests that determination of satisfactory integrity may be based more on the degree of documentation for the historic period in question, and that the criteria “continues to tolerate the misconception that a line, a date, divides the present from the past and that from our vantage point within the present it is possible to describe the past accurately, analyze it objectively, and interpret it with fidelity to some absolute standard of truth or reality.”168 Contributing to the bias toward the built environment is the structure of the National Historic Register process itself; this is suggested in the text of Bulletin #38, discussing traditional cultural properties, now referred to as ethnographic landscapes: This Bulletin does not address cultural resources that are purely ‘intangible’—i.e. those that have no property referents—except by exclusion.... [T]he National Register is not the appropriate vehicle for recognizing cultural values that are purely intangible, nor is there legal authority to address them under Section 106 unless they are somehow

related to a historic property.169 Also adding to this apparent bias is the close relationship the NPS staff have with membe rs of the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) and the National Trust for Historic Preservation; several of the Bulletins were written by ASLA employees, and many articles in the Trust's journal, Historic Preservation Forum, are written by NPS employees. These relationships suggest that the definitions or landscape meanings of these organizations are likely to garner more weight in consideration than the cultural values of other groups. Melnick specifically notes that his manual addresses places “either not inhabited by the culture group primarily responsible for the landscape’s character, or places where

168 Catherine Howett, “Integrity as a Value in Cultural Landscape Preservation,” in Preserving Cultural Landscapes in America, Arnold R. Alanen and Robert Z. Melnick, eds. (2000), at 199. 169 Patricia L. Parker and Thomas F. King, "Guidelines for Evaluating and Documenting Traditional Cultural Properties," National Register Bulletin 38 (1990), at 3; emphasis is mine. 108 the culture group is no longer a significant or viable force in forming the landscape.”170 He goes on to suggest that the identification and evaluation sections could apply to landscapes that are still culturally dynamic, but that the “socio-cultural aspects of these landscapes are beyond the scope or direction of this manual.” However, there are no guidelines included for how to ascertain whether any current culture groups can still be counted as a “cultural force.” Furthermore, despite this clear declaration, the “Options for Management” section of the manual addresses management prescriptions such as criteria for allowing changes in types or intensity use, and determination of compatible and incompatible uses. These types of management concerns suggest that some of these rural districts do still contain dynamic cultural forces that are directing or causing change. In contrast, Bulletin #30 makes no references to “socio-cultural landscapes,” nor does it contain management options or suggest how to weigh or distinguish current uses and practices from historic considerations. In his introduction to a special thematic issue in 1993 of Cultural Resources Management dedicated to cultural and historic landscapes, NPS staff member Charles Birnbaum suggests that a “reality check” is in order for the landscape preservation movement. He quotes architectural critic Ada Louise Huxtable as saying that there has recently been a shift in perception, emphasizing that in much preservation work, history has become “bowdlerized,” i.e. simplified and accessible to the masses, but not authentic.171 Underlying this concern, however, is a crucial assumption that seems pervasive throughout the Park Service's approach to cultural landscapes: that there exists a single authentic past, and that it can be discerned by experts, using the proper guidelines and criteria. This assumption does not allow for multiple interpretations or experiences of the past, nor does it allow for changes in the meaning of “the past” over time.

170 Ibid. at 11. 171 Charles Birnbaum, "A Reality Check for Our Nation's Parks," Cultural Resources Management 16(4): 1-4 (1993). 109 There admittedly must be some sort of criteria to decide which places warrant special protection, if any of them are; otherwise the landscape protection program would be dangerously ambiguous and arbitrary. However, NPS must at least recognize and acknowledge the implications of the built-in biases in the program.172 By tying significance and integrity to a specific historic period and particular physical characteristics of the landscape, the criteria steers the definition of the “authentic” landscape away from more intangible or present-day cultural meanings. Alanen and Melnick recently noted an inclination in cultural landscape preservation to “simplify rather than clarify the values inherent in cultural landscapes and, correspondingly, to

simplify responses to those values.”173 In addition, they suggest that “holds the potential to negate the very idiosyncratic landscape qualities that set one place apart from another.”174 Further research is needed to determine the extent to which the NPS could incorporate some of the richer understandings of landscape from the academic literature, despite the limits on its legal authority as written in the National Historic Preservation Act.

D. Recent Developments in NPS Management

The political shifts that began to influence the NPS in the 1960s have continued through the following decades to the present. Foresta describes the modern era of the NPS as one of trying to adjust to changing circumstances: “the agency found its traditional goals devalued, the premises on which it had built past successes and managed

172 All NPS cultural landscape work is based on the same preservation framework stemming back to the 1930s: a very broad-based philosophy. Speaking to the Director of the NPS’s national-scale Park Historic Structures and Cultural Landscapes Program, I asked him whether he thought the National Register structure is limiting, but he thought not, in fact, when he first was hired around 1990, there was a movement to create a new, separate set of Secretary’s Guidelines for landscapes (as they did for vessels), which he opposed. He thinks the philosophy and Register criteria are broad and basic, forming a good starting point; the challenge is then in applying them to landscapes. Interview with Bob Page 7/29/99. 173 Arnold R. Alanen and Robert Z. Melnick, “Introduction: Why Cultural Landscape Preservation?”, in Preserving Cultural Landscapes in America, Arnold R. Alanen and Robert Z. Melnick, eds. (2000), at 17. 174 Ibid. 110 the Park System rejected, and its relationships with its traditional sources of support either eroded or reordered.”175 Up until 1980, the NPS continued to expand at an unprecedented rate, fueled by Congressmen who saw parks as the perfect “pork” projects to bring home to their constituencies. The position of NPS director became a political revolving door, distancing it from the increasingly autonomous staff and contributing to the agency’s overall loss of steering capacity. Environmental groups came to regard themselves more as judges of the NPS rather than allies, as they became increasingly discontent with the Progressive vision on which the NPS was based.176 Compared to its heyday in the 1920s and ‘30s, the NPS has become a weaker agency with an increasingly muddled sense of its mission for the future. Yet even as it is treated more and more like a political entity, and as the parks themselves become more diverse and less “traditional,” the NPS management approach still stubbornly clings to the notion that it is a nonpolitical scientific agency preserving static aesthetic resources in perpetuity. This ideological view is starting to change, but slowly and in a completely piecemeal fashion, and much of NPS management remains deeply informed by the old idealizations of unchanging, nationally-symbolic natural scenery, even as the viability of that park model has been seriously challenged on various fronts. Most important to this study, the agency’s attitude toward residents in parks has shifted somewhat in the last several decades, but it remains fractured and unpredictable. In general, official policy increasingly suggests that residents may be left in place and tolerated, but they are still regarded with skepticism by most managers, and are still often moved out of the parks in favor of more “natural” uninhabited landscapes. This lack of change in ideological approach is particularly reflected in the direction and style of day-to-day park management. Under Congress’ push toward more “pork project” parks, the NPS has taken on what Foresta describes as a somewhat

175 Foresta (9184), at 59. 176 In most of the national environmental groups, preservationists who saw civilization and nature as fundamentally incompatible have become much more dominant than in the past. Ibid. at 61. 111 resentful “can-be” policy; while they dislike having parks they consider suboptimal forced upon them, the managers then do all they can with their limited resources to make the new areas appear to fit within the System.177 Yet the agency staff also maintain an underlying sense of serious qualitative differences among parks: Mackintosh writes, “Plainly put, some of the System’s 334 areas are better than others.”178 Many of the new units are frowned upon for having too little national significance, scenery that is too ordinary, or too “political” of support. The older, more traditional parks like Yosemite and Yellowstone are still regarded as the “crown jewels” of the System, and clearly are regarded by many NPS employees as the “proper” form a park should take.179 They also shape the agency’s approach toward other, less iconic parks. There has been a controversy recently in San Francisco with the Golden Gate National Recreation Area concerning dog-walking within the park unit. After NPS staff fenced off a section at Fort Funston traditionally used for dog-walking, ostensibly to protect nesting birds, locals took the NPS to court. The judge found that not only had the GGNRA failed to hold public hearings as mandated by its own regulations, the evidence suggested that it had attempted “to railroad through the closure, to maintain secrecy, to unleash the fencing with lightning speed, and to establish a fait accompli.”180 A number of letters to the editor that followed complained that the NPS tries to manage all park units as if they were the same, as if they were all Yosemite or Yellowstone, ignoring the special needs

and concerns of urban users. This included a letter from a historian working in the NPS regional office, arguing that the NPS emphasizes natural resources in all park units, regardless of type or focus.181 After the NPS Regional Director wrote in response, another letter to the editor stated:

177 Ibid. at 79. 178 Mackintosh (1985), at 96. 179 See Dwight F. Rettie, Our National Park System: Caring For America's Greatest Natural and Historic Treasures (1995), at 28-29. 180 Marianne Costantinou, “Judge’s ruling puts park service in the dog house,” San Francisco Examiner, April 27, 2000, page A1. 181 “I have observed two tendencies of National Park Service managers and planners over the last quarter- century. They will try to make natural resources paramount whether they are dealing with a national park, 112 “John Reynolds, regional director of the National Park Service, makes an important point (letter, April 13) that the Park Service is run under a single code of federal regulations. This means that Fort Funston and the Presidio, located in the middle of one of the most densely populated areas in the United States, are treated like Yosemite and Yellowstone… Reynolds’ letter simply underscores the fact that the Park Service’s one- size-fits-all approach has not been effective in dealing with these urban parklands.”182 The shift of authority away from the Director’s office in recent decades means that agency subunits have become increasingly autonomous. Particularly, individual park superintendents act more and more independently, sometimes with little guidance from,

or in complete opposition to, the agency leadership.183 This has had profound implications for park management. Sax and Keiter, in their study at Glacier National Park, found that park officials’ behavior tends to “resist being rule-bound;” managers prefer broad mandates to specific rules and regulations, often regard officials from both other agencies and interest groups as “outsiders,” and usually seek to protect their discretion as much as possible.184 They have also been criticized as having an attitude of “deep-seated indifference” toward national environmental and preservation legislation, often regarding compliance with laws such as NEPA and the NHPA as merely “jumping through hoops.”185 The overall management culture takes a fairly utilitarian and

a national monument, a national battlefield, a national historic site, a national historic park, a national seashore, a national recreation area or any of several other categories managed by the park service… The second tendency of the National Park Service is to define recreation as narrowly as possible, even in a ‘national recreation area.’ You and I might consider walking a dog or playing with a cat a form of recreation, but the National Park Service would not.” Letter to the Editor written by Gordon Chappell, San Francisco Examiner, March 14, 2000. 182 Letter to the Editor written by Jeffery J. Ward, San Francisco Examiner, April 21, 2000. 183 Foresta (1984), at 90. Note that in 1995 the agency’s hierarchical structure was substantially reorganized (for the first time since 1937), giving even greater autonomy to the parks, and reducing both the size and oversight of the DC office. See NPS press release, “National Park Service Reorganization Marks Most Significant Organizational Change in Agency’s 79-Year History,” May 15, 1995. 184 Joseph L. Sax and Robert B. Keiter, “Glacier National Park and Its Neighbors: A Study of Federal Interagency Relations,” Ecology Law Quarterly 14:207-263 (1987). 185 Sellars (1997), at 279-280. 113 pragmatic bent, emphasizing expediency and quick solutions, resisting information gathering through long-term research, and avoiding outside interference.186 Thus the parks are managed in the ways the individual supervisors prefer, leading to a wide-ranging variety of approaches, with very little consistency between parks, and policy changes initiated from the top of the agency’s structure often are not implemented at the ground level. This is particularly true if the changes involve a move away from the embedded ideologies of national parks as static, natural, uninhabited places.187 A 1985 report by the Conservation Foundation on the national parks concluded that within the NPS, “the perceived core responsibility has always been the natural areas.”188 Up to that time, park managers had been given little technical assistance in identifying and protecting historic and cultural resources, and often regarded these human elements as “intrusions” on the landscape, assuming that they “ultimately would be razed in favor of returning the land to a more natural state.”189 Designation of buildings or landscapes as historic can be regarded as an unwelcome constraint on management discretion, and some st aff continue to question the appropriateness of NPS involvement with historic and cultural preservation. Alanen notes that even at the “new model” park units of national seashores and lakeshores, despite the passage of the NHPA, NPS managers continued to demolish old structures or allow abandoned buildings to deteriorate until they were safety hazards.190 In contrast, the appropriateness of managing natural resources has never been

questioned. Despite the reference to Cape Cod National Seashore’s retention of residents within the park landscape as a “new model,” inhabitants and private property have

186 Ibid. at 284. 187 Rettie (1995), at 7: “The Service has usually found new departures difficult to assimilate into its perceived mission.” 188 The Conservation Foundation (1985), at 113. 189 Ibid. at 114. 190 Arnold R. Alanen, “Considering the Ordinary: Vernacular Landscapes in Small Towns and Rural Areas,” in Preserving Cultural Landscapes in America, Arnold R. Alanen and Robert Z. Melnick, eds. (2000), at 129. 114 continued to be considered mostly antithetical to park management.191 Inholdings are still formally regarded as threats.192 Even Point Reyes National Seashore, established in the same year as Cape Cod, stayed in line with the older approach; as the next chapter will show, after a period of uncertainty as to how much land would be acquired, the NPS bought the vast majority of the private lands, and while some ranch owners within the park were granted 20-year reservations of right to continue operations, the trend has been to gradually decrease the number of people living in the park.193 In the decades since then, parks have increasingly been employed as a tool to stop the otherwise inevitable march of urban or suburban sprawl, often including existing communities as a result. There are also increasing numbers of “greenline” or cooperatively managed parks—places that mix federal ownership with state and local ownership, plus private property—although their acceptance outside of Washington DC has been described as “lukewarm at best.”194 Yet even as the parks frequently include long-time inhabitants, the NPS remains fairly reluctant to use easements as a mechanism for land protection, stemming from early experiences with them in establishing parkways; private landowners often did not really understand the rights they were giving up, and subsequent owners sometimes were either not aware of the easements at all, or did not feel bound by them, making the easements difficult to manage and enforce.195 The NPS’s historic preference for complete ownership in fee remains firmly entrenched.

The combination of this attitude with the changing circumstances of new parks has resulted in a wide variety of treatments for residents in recent decades. Despite legislative language specifying the protection of historic communities, establishment of the Buffalo National River in 1972 and Cuyahoga National Recreation Area in 1974 both

191 The Cape Cod model was followed in a few cases, such as Fire Island National Seashore and Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore. Note that both of these parks are very close to urban areas, and were extensively developed at the time of establishment. 192 See The Conservation Foundation (1985), at 121. 193 This case will be discussed in greater detail in Chapter 4. 194 The Conservation Foundation (1985), at 258. 195 Ibid. 115 resulted in fee-simple acquisition by the NPS and removal of the residents.196 Both also triggered widespread criticism of the NPS. A series of General Accounting Office reports charged that the NPS bought too much land rather than using alternative protection measures (such as easements or zoning) that would have allowed residents to stay put.197 In 1985 the Conservation Foundation noted that, although the best way to ensure upkeep and protection of buildings is through their active use, “today the park service is steward to many empty buildings, including some bought from occupants.”198 NPS had taken dynamic, living communities and turned them into static historic landscapes, apparently destined to gradually decay and disappear.199 In contrast, Lowell National Historic Park (Massachusetts), Ebey’s Landing National Historic Reserve (Washington State), and Pinelands National Reserve (New Jersey), all established in 1978, have followed a more Cape Cod-like model, eschewing NPS ownership almost entirely in favor of a partnership approach. These parks rely on management teams consisting of state and local authorities as well as the NPS, and most of the land remains in private ownership, with easements and other use restrictions. Few if any residents were displaced, and economic activity continues to take place within the protected areas, in concert with tourists visiting the parks. Such an inconsistent approach to managing inhabited parks indicates that some change has taken place in NPS attitudes toward residents and private ownership, but it is unpredictable, and often dependent on the management style of each individual Superintendent.

196 In the case of Cuyahoga, the Superintendent’s ultimate goal has been described as “letting nature reign supreme,” and despite explicit instructions from the Congressman who orchestrated establishment of the park that “the only houses to be acquired should be eyesores, incompatible uses, or those in areas designated for public recreational use,” almost all were condemned and purchased. Ron Cockrell, A Green-Shrouded Miracle: The Administrative History of Cuyahoga Valley National Recreation Area, Ohio, at 145. 197 See GAO, The Federal Drive to Acquire Private Lands Should Be Reassessed Publication No. CED-80- 14 (1979); The National Park Service Should Improve Its Land Acquisition and Management Practices at the Fire Island National Seashore, Publication No. CED-81-78 (1981); and Federal Land Acquisition and Management Practices, Publication No. CED-81-135 (1981). 198 The Conservation Foundation (1985), at 115. 199 Note that both are now attempting to bring some private inhabitants/use back into the parks, and particularly Boxley Valley in the Buffalo National River has become a “poster child” for cultural landscape management. 116 The interest in cultural landscapes that began within the NPS in the early 1980s, marked by Melnick’s report, has grown into a small national-level Park Historic Structures and Cultural Landscapes Program since 1990. The primary focus of this office, working with support staff in regional offices around the country, is establishing a thorough Cultural Landscape Inventory, creating a new database of all cultural landscapes within the Park System that have potential to be nominated to the National Register.200 Official NPS policy guidelines for cultural resource management now recognize cultural landscapes as a distinct resource type.201 However, many staff in parks have not yet grasped what a cultural landscape really is; one role of the national program is education in that regard, making sure park staff understand the cultural

landscape concept and how to include it in planning processes.202 Overall, the historic and cultural preservation side of NPS management is very top-down: based more in the centralized offices than the park units themselves, driven by National Register criteria etc. This is quite incongruent with traditional park management, which tends to be very decentralized and park-specific. Park superintendents prefer to have extensive discretion than to follow edicts from Washington DC. It also clashes with the underlying ideological themes that inform almost all aspects of park management, idealizing natural scenery, national rather than local significance, and unchanging views. The new Cultural landscape program has great

intentions, but faces an uphill battle against these historic biases of the agency and their continued existence in staff, the general weakness of the historic/cultural branches within the agency, and the preservation structure and requirements imposed by the NHPA and Register that conflict with the reality of cultural landscapes. It remains to be seen how effective this new program will be in changing these attitudes.

200 Interview with Park Historic Structures and Cultural Landscapes Program Director Bob Page, 7/29/99. 201 NPS 28 policy guidelines contains general concepts of cultural resources in the parks; specifically Chapter 7 deals with cultural landscapes and general policies toward their management. 202 Interview with Cari Goetcheus, Park Historic Structures and Cultural Landscapes Program, 3/9/99. 117

V. Conclusion

In 1983 Everhart described the NPS as a “tribal clan,” with a somewhat parochial outlook on its role in park protection.203 The historical development of U.S. national parks and their managing agency clearly reveals certain ideological values associated with preserved places, which remain firmly entrenched in the management outlook of the agency. Parks are idealized as nationally important, aesthetically scenic, never-changing natural areas devoid of human occupation, other than reverential tourists—and despite the wide variation in types of places protected under NPS management, they are managed by uniform policies and standardized approaches that continue to value these ideological themes. Over time, through NPS management and interpretation, these romanticized values have been written into the park landscapes, so that these distinctions continue to be reproduced in the minds of new staff and new visitors. The persistence of these idealized notions of preservation in the national parks creates special problems for protection of cultural landscapes. Parks remain wildly popular with the public, but often are still valued primarily for their natural scenery; Sellars suggests, “The public may take for granted that unimpaired natural conditions exist, especially in the larger parks. To the untrained eye, unoccupied lands can mean unimpaired lands....”204 In this particular ideological view of what a national park ought to be, there is no room for long-term residents: “Conventional park management wisdom asserts that the proper format for all parks is to eliminate all the people from the site.”205 The historical pattern of NPS management of inhabited landscapes has been the removal,

203 Everhart (1972), at 2-3. 204 Sellars (1997), at 287, emphasis in original. 205 Rettie (1995), at 55-56. 118 either immediate or gradual, of the residents in favor of artificially re-created “natural” scenes. Recently the NPS has begun to experiment with a different approach, allowing the continued occupation of parks by their long-time residents as part of the protected landscape, rather than an unwelcome threat to it. Theodore Catton’s work on the special cases of Alaskan parks created in the early 1980s shows that their establishment

“recognized the rights of occupation and use by native peoples—as well as by descendants of earlier European-American settlers.”206 Spence sees these new kinds of arrangements as potentially revolutionary in the way the American public experiences nature: [T]he notion of a usable or inhabitable wilderness implies that ‘nature’ and ‘culture’ are deeply intertwined, if not inseparable. Rather than idolize wilderness as a nonhuman landscape, where a person can be nothing more than ‘a visitor who does not remain,’ national parks might provide important new lessons about the degree to which cultural values

and actions have always shaped the ‘natural world.’207 Chapter Four will explore the case of Point Reyes National Seashore, a park caught between these new approaches and persistent ideological views of inhabited landscapes in parks.

206 Catton (1997), at xiv. 207 Spence (1998), at 139. 119 CHAPTER 4

Preservation Of A Particular Landscape: Point Reyes National Seashore

I. Introduction

Combining landscape theory with the historical development of the NPS as an agency, I have developed the following hypothesis: once cultural landscapes are preserved and managed by the NPS, they will tend to move from a local, working, and cultural landscape toward an increasingly nationalized, arrested, and natural landscape. This chapter tests the hypothesis with an in-depth case study identifying the actual changes that have occurred at Point Reyes National Seashore (PRNS) once the NPS became involved with its preservation and management. The NPS has been confronted with the presence of existing human settlements in a number of its park units, and the agency’s official response to this issue has varied somewhat over time. Recent works have examined NPS policy toward Native Americans, and due to the different legal statutes that govern management of many Native American resources, this research focuses instead on non-indigenous communities only.1 Chapter 3 discussed parks such as Shenandoah National Park (established 1935), where nearly all of the private lands were acquired via condemnation and the residents were moved out of the park, to the recent trend of creating “virtual parks,” such as Ebey’s Landing National Historic Reserve (established 1978), with little if any acquisition of privately held lands, yet still adding an overlay of NPS management and regulation to the

1 See Catton (1997), Spence (1999), and Burnham (2000) for discussions of NPS policy toward Native Americans. 119 existing landscape. Despite these variations in official policy, the outcomes on the park landscapes have been fairly consistent: removing or reducing the number of residents, acquiring privately owned land, and emphasizing resources that reflect national and natural interests. Parks initially containing human settlements vary in a number of key variables that influence NPS policy: date established, with associated historical and administrative context; type of unit (i.e. National Park, River, Recreation Area, etc.); and land tenure arrangements. I selected Point Reyes as my case study because it represents a midpoint in these three continuums of NPS policy toward active communities inside park boundaries: established in the early 1960s, as a National Seashore, and acquiring full land title yet retaining the residents. After testing my hypothesis and establishing this baseline documentation of agency effects on the landscape, later research can investigate the role of these larger variables in affecting the degree to which landscape change occurs. This chapter is structured around the three themes of NPS ideology, showing how the Point Reyes landscape has become increasingly nationalized, arrested, and natural. I have examined a number of key variables, both physical aspects of the landscape and policies regarding their management, as indicators of shifts occurring in the landscape. While the ideological themes of change are always interlinked and overlapping, I have organized their indicators so as to identify each trend as distinctly as possible. The methods used to analyze these indicators include direct observation in the landscape, textual analysis of planning and other historical documents, and interviews with park staff.

120 II. Historic Background

The Point Reyes peninsula was first studied by the NPS as a potential park location in the 1930s, and in 1959 it was formally proposed as a National Seashore.2 It was not an empty landscape, though; it had been inhabited for centuries by coastal Miwok tribes.3 Since approximately the 1830s and continuing into the present day, the peninsula has been used extensively for raising cattle, primarily for a thriving dairy industry. This 170-year stretch of historic use has had a profound impact on the landscape, resulting in distinctive patterns of use and meaning for the local inhabitants. The strength of the dairy industry kept the land open and relatively undeveloped, making it an attractive location for a national park unit. Thus it is important for this study to briefly review this history, as it sets the stage for the changes that will be described in later chapters. Much of this historic context is drawn from a Historic Resource Study published by PRNS in 1993.4 The use of the Point Reyes peninsula for cattle grazing reaches back to the 1830s, when the area was settled by Mexican rancheros on massive land grants, raising large herds of cattle for the hide and tallow industry. After 1850, when California became part of the U.S., several families began to develop dairies on the peninsula, drawn by the extended growing season for pasture. The cool moist climate of Point Reyes provided ideal conditions for dairy cows: plenty of grass with a long growing season and abundant fresh water supplies. Litigation over the land title to the Mexican land grants resulted in ownership of the entire peninsula falling into the hands of a legal firm, Shafter, Shafter, Park and Heydenfeldt. The brothers James and Oscar Shafter bought out the interests of the other two partners, and in 1865, with the help of Oscar’s son-in-law Charles Howard,

2 Dewey Livingston, Ranching on the Point Reyes Peninsula: A History of the Dairy and Beef Ranches Within Point Reyes National Seashore, 1834-1992, Historic Resource Study (1993), at 72. 3 For more detail on local Miwok history see Malcolm Margolin, The Ohlone Way: Indian Life in the San Francisco-Monterey Bay Area (1978). 4 Livingston (1993). 121 developed a network of thirty-two tenant-run dairies and cattle ranches, most named for letters of the alphabet, transforming the entire Point into an ordered, fenced industry.5 (Figure 4.1: map of Shafter dairies)

5 They sold one ranch site, covering the tip of Tomales Point, to a friend named Solomon Pierce. 122 Figure 4.1: Map of Shafter dairies (from Livingston 1993).

123

This ranch system, along with several other independent dairies in the area, produced record yields of the highest quality butter and cheese throughout the late 19th century. In 1872, the largest yield of butter from a California county was Marin, weighing in with over 4 million pounds produced, most of which came from Point Reyes; the second-largest producer was Sonoma County with only 760,000 pounds.6 Most of the butter was shipped on schooners to the rapidly growing city of San Francisco. The Point Reyes dairies were considered to be of the highest quality, and the trademark star within a circle stamp on products from the peninsula was often counterfeited by others hoping to bring the higher prices that the Point Reyes butter brought. Several families who started dairying at Point Reyes later moved on to other parts of the state, contributing to the establishment of California as a leader in dairy production, and innovations in technology and technique developed on the peninsula were adopted nation-wide. The Shafters developed the dairy ranches themselves, creating a distinctive pattern of architecture and ranch layout. The ranches varied in size from 800 to 2,000 acres, and required access to fresh water and lands open enough for grazing. Ranch houses, dairy buildings, barns and outbuildings, and fencing systems were constructed roughly between 1860-1880. (Figure 4.2: typical dairy layout) The Shafters selected tenants whom they believed to be steady and reliable, mostly Irish, Italian-speaking Swiss, and Portuguese immigrant families. Tenants rented the cows, buildings and land, but provided their own furnishings, tools and equipment, and other livestock, mainly horses and pigs. Within a few decades almost all of the residents planted rows of trees, either blue gum eucalyptus (Eucalyptus globulus) or Monterey cypress (Cupressus macrocarpa), to shield the ranch sites somewhat from the ever-present wind and fog. They also planted home gardens and small agricultural plots.

6 Livingston (1993), at 37. 124

Figure 4.2: Typical Shafter dairy layout (from Livingston 1993).

125

Figure 4.3: The Kehoe (J) Ranch, showing the windbreak to the right of the main complex.

Figure 4.4: Cows at Kehoe Ranch returning to the barn for milking.

Daily life on the Point was hard; the cows must be milked twice a day, every day, except for a brief dry period in the late summer. Despite the good ocean connection for

126 schooners via Drake’s Bay and other inlets, the peninsula was incredibly isolated, as the few wagon roads were often muddy and difficult to travel on, not to mention the endless gates that had to be opened and shut between each ranch. Farm hands lived on the ranches, and each ranch had to be relatively self-sufficient. Several ranches had their own blacksmith’s shops, and over time the residents developed their own schools, post office, and other social and religious meeting places, as the nearest towns of Inverness (developed in the late 1880s primarily as a resort community) and Point Reyes Station (the closest railroad depot) were still a long trip away. Between 1919-1939 the lawyers’ estates sold the ranches off, usually to the resident tenant families; as a result, a number of ranching families have been on the Point for generations. During this period the dairy industry was also changing, with greater state regulation of sanitation and production standards. With better transportation, most of the ranches switched from producing butter and cheese to primarily producing fresh milk. These provoked modifications of the dairies, usually with the addition of a Grade A-certified barn with concrete floors and specific drainage and sanitary conditions. Some ranches shifted out of dairy entirely, changing over to raising beef cattle or vegetable farming. A number of ranch houses were also remodeled during this period. The ranches also gradually became better connected to the outside world by telephone and electricity, and by widened and paved county roads. The Point Reyes landscape was not only used for ranching. A lighthouse was constructed on the Point in 1870 to guide passing ships, staffed by a head keeper and three assistants (often contracted from nearby A Ranch). Several hunting lodges were established in the forested parts of the Inverness Ridge, including the Country Club, the oldest hunting lodge in the state, in Bear Valley at present-day Divide Meadow. This club was used primarily for sport hunting by wealthy San Franciscans through the 1930s, with hunting rights on 76,000 acres of Shafter ranches, and built a clubhouse, lodgings,

127 stables for horses and cows, and several stocked fishing ponds.7 In 1929 RCA developed a massive radio installation on the peninsula for short-wave trans-Pacific communications, consisting of large fields of transmission towers; this was followed later by a similar installation by AT&T. The Coast Guard also established a station on the peninsula later in the 1920s, and portions of the southern end of the Point were used by the Army during World War II. Between the 1920s and ‘50s several ranches attempted some commercial agriculture projects, growing artichokes, peas, or cut flowers. These uses have all had their effects in shaping the Point Reyes landscape as it existed when the Seashore was first established. Management since then has had a number of effects, which will be analyzed below according to the three ideological themes that guide the NPS.

Figure 4.5: Radio towers on MCI/AT&T lands.

In addition, PRNS also has had management authority over the northern portion of the adjacent Golden Gate National Recreation Area (GGNRA) since 1975. These lands consist of the Olema Valley, formed by the San Andreas Fault running between the

7 The club had accommodations for thirty-five, which were described as quite luxurious. Membership was limited to 125, all of whom had to first belong to the elite Pacific Union Club, and then be invited to join. 128 Bolinas-Fairfax road in the south to Tomales Bay in the North, and the Tocaloma area, east of the towns of Olema and Point Reyes Station. The entire northern portion of the GGNRA has historically been used for ranching. (Figure 4.6: map) Because it is more similar to the Point Reyes peninsula than most of the rest of the GGNRA, which primarily consists of old

129

Figure 4.6: Map of ranches on GGNRA-owned lands, administered by PRNS (from Livingston 1995).

130 military sites in and around the city of San Francisco, PRNS has administrative authority over these lands, although planning authority remains with the GGNRA. Thus the Olema and Tocaloma ranches are included in this analysis of PRNS management of the area’s cultural landscapes.

Figure 4.7: Southern entrance to the Olema Valley.

III. Theme One: Local and Vernacular to Nationalized and Standardized

The first trend is a shift toward an increasingly nationalized and standardized landscape. As detailed in the previous chapter, the NPS has historically insisted that parks must have national significance to be included in the National Park System, and so reshapes the landscape to emphasize those aspects that unify people’s experience of both the place and themselves. The agency also has standardized procedures and practices for developing park units, further reshaping the landscape according to a nationally developed mold. Much of this reshaping results from deliberate actions—adding visitor centers, picnic tables, restrooms, interpretive signs—to make the park landscape comply with national standards and expectations regarding visitor and safety needs. But it also 131 stems from the standardization of the goals of park management, as a national agency increasingly attempts to manage all park units according to the same policies and practices. This section discusses four indicators of this trend toward nationalization. First, NPS ownership of the land within the Seashore boundaries, giving the federal government direct legal control of the landscape. Tenure arrangements for the remaining residents have also shifted toward greater national control, as reservations of use and occupancy give way to special use permits, contributing to an overall theme of declining flexibility for the permittees. Construction of new buildings and infrastructure, as well as maintenance policies for existing structures, function to remove the park from the “ordinary” landscape, setting it off as an official, recognizable unit in the National Park System. Finally, the relationship between NPS staff and local communities, both in and outside the Seashore, highlights the distinction between the vernacular landscape and the increasingly official park-scape. Together they provide evidence of the first NPS ideological theme being written into the landscape at Point Reyes.

A. Legal Control of the Landscape

One of the major elements to NPS nationalization of the landscape is land title, with the federal government having actual legal control of the land and what happens on it. As shown in Chapter Three, historically the NPS has had a very strong bias toward acquiring fee simple title of the land as a prerequisite to the agency’s involvement and management. This has certainly been the case at Point Reyes, although it was not readily apparent from the outset. As mentioned in the previous chapter, Point Reyes was intended to be one of a new type of park, being created from predominantly private lands, and the opportunity was there for the NPS to take a different approach to land ownership and management. In fact, the NPS did not start in 1962 with any large-scale

132 condemnation authority in the northern section of the park, designated as a privately- owned pastoral zone.8 Yet within the first ten years of the Seashore’s existence, the agency managed to acquire nearly all of the privately-held land within its boundaries. While the resident ranchers still had influence on the landscape, the power to control its fate significantly shifted into the park managers’ hands. Public hearings and draft NPS planning documents that preceded the establishment of PRNS indicate that immediate public ownership of the lands within the proposed boundaries was not the only policy option considered; plans for the ranches kept changing from remaining privately-owned to public ownership with leasebacks to those who wanted to continue operations. In early 1960, the first Senate bill introduced proposed the Seashore as a single 35,000-acre unit, excluding most of the active dairies, and for the NPS to have full condemnation authority in order to acquire the lands within

the boundary.9 Yet by the time of the first Congressional hearings (April 14, 1960), the NPS had already revised its proposal to a 53,000-acre park, including a 21,000-acre pastoral zone.10 The NPS Regional Chief of Recreation and Planning stated a preference for buying the whole acreage and leasing back the ranches, allowing approximately half the number of cattle to remain, yet also suggested the NPS was at least willing to consider a privately-owned pastoral zone protected by scenic easements.11 However, the agency’s flexibility toward land ownership did not last.

8 The NPS did not have condemnation authority over any parcels larger than 500 acres within the pastoral zone, “so long as it remains in its natural state, or is used exclusively for ranching and dairying purposes including housing directly incident thereto.” None of the ranch parcels were smaller than 500 acres. Public Law 87-657, Sec. 4. 9 U.S. Congress, Senate Hearings (1960), at 1; the bill is S. 2428. Note that in early undated Q&A document, most likely prior to 3/1/60, has language suggesting the “pastoral quality of some of the interior landscape is one of the great charms of the region and should be preserved insofar as that would be possible in a national seashore project.” Undated draft of document “Questions and Answers Concerning the Proposed Point Reyes National Seashore,” at 9, question #15. A later draft of this document is marked “Sent to Rep. Miller,” suggesting this was an NPS Regional Planning Staff-authored compilation of information regarding the proposed seashore. 10 Testimony suggests that this revised proposal had only been learned of by others ten days prior to the hearings. See testimony of B.W. Broemmel, Marin County Assessor, at 19. 11 U.S. Congress, Senate Hearings (1960), at 13. From a variety of testimony at these hearings, though, it is clear that few if any of the ranching proponents had previously heard mention of scenic easements, and that they did not understand what easements were or how they would differ from leases. 133 Many locals opposed NPS purchase of the ranches, concerned that too many lands would be taken out of agriculture.12 Many cited worries about the local economy, and suggested that the climate on the western side of the Inverness Ridge would be too cold and inhospitable for recreation users.13 They also questioned why the Seashore needed to be as large as it was now proposed: why not the smaller 35,000-acre park covering mostly land already out of agriculture? A representative of the Marin County Farm Bureau asked, “If the ranches are to be leased back, then why acquire them at all?”14 Many locals seemed suspicious that, despite language in the bill that allowed for the continuation of ranching operations, agriculture would sooner or later be pushed out of the park. The President of Marin County Soil Conservation District summed up this attitude: “When it gets into the hands of the Government you can say what you want, it is gone. You may lease it back, but the only reason why you are taking it is that someday

you are going to need it.”15 Testimony from park advocates countered that protecting the entire peninsula represented a logical park unit, but more importantly argued that federal ownership of title was needed to stop subdivisions and residential development on the Point Reyes peninsula.16 At the 1961 hearings urban sprawl in the Bay Area was characterized by Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall as a “relentless force,” and on-going subdivisions within the park were cited as evidence of the increasing urgency for establishment of the

12 In a 1991 interview, rancher Boyd Stewart noted that early advocates of the park proposal did not contact the ranchers within the proposed boundaries at all, which may have contributed to the ranchers’ perception of the proposal as a threat. Ann Lage and William J. Duddleston, Saving Point Reyes National Seashore, 1969-1970: An Oral History of Citizen Action in Conservation (1993), at 237. 13 Climate is also cited by locals as one reason why the Peninsula would never be developed for year-round residential use – see Mendoza testimony, U.S. Congress, Senate Hearings (1960), at 183, for example. 14 Testimony from Ed Rennington, U.S. Congress, Senate Hearings (1960), at 186. 15 Testimony from Waldo Giacomini, U.S. Congress, Senate Hearings (1960), at 165. Senator Moss argues agriculture would be lost to subdivision if not for the park, but Giacomini answers that it’s still lost as a park—would like to see it protected as agriculture, but specifically not as part of a park bill. 16 There is also discussion of protecting the peninsula as a visual unit. For example, Senator Kuchel’s statement opening the 1960 Senate hearings stressed the importance of protecting more than just the waterfront, but also the hills, to “create an atmosphere of solitude associated with the sea” (U.S. Congress, Senate Hearings (1960), at 3-4). Also U.S. Congress, House Hearings (1961) at 148, Representative Johnson mentions that the Inverness Ridge makes an important boundary as a “visual barrier.” 134 park.17 Both Udall and the sponsoring Congressmen seriously questioned whether the Marin County Board of Supervisors (referred to by Udall as “short-sighted officials”), which was pro-development at the time, would pass adequate zoning protections or enforce easements, if the pastoral zone was left in private ownership. Co-sponsor Clem Miller’s testimony articulated a need for control over ranch lands, in case the owners changed their minds about ranching and built subdivisions or manufacturing facilities instead.18 This completely overlooked the traditional patterns of selling land in the area; ranches rarely changed hands, and when they did it was usually between friends or relatives, without the use of real estate agents.19 Many of the ranches had been continuously operating at Point Reyes for multiple generations of the same families, first as tenants, then as owners. Yet despite this history, local control of land use represented an unacceptable variable of uncertainty to the NPS and its supporters.20 Opponents of the proposal pointed out in 1961 that only one subdivider on the peninsula had actually sold any lots.21 In fact, the largest movement in the direction of subdivision took place after the park had been proposed. In January 1960, soon after PRNS was first proposed, there were a total of sixty-two owners on the peninsula, but by early 1962, there were 396 owners.22 A chart (Figure 4.8) included in the 1962 appraisal of Wildcat Ranch shows that by August 6, 1962, a total of 665 lots had been planned in

17 Stewart Udall’s testimony, U.S. Congress, Senate Hearings (1961), at 8 and 32. In contrast, a 1964 independent appraisal of the Home Ranch describes overall population increase in Marin County, but specifically notes that “This population surge has barely affected West Marin and the Point Reyes peninsula. The population was almost static during the 1950-1960 period. Building activity has been relatively minor.” Kermichel appraisal of the Home Ranch, 12/24/64, PRNS files. 18 U.S. Congress, Senate Hearings (1961), at 53. 19 Interview with Boyd Stewart, Lage and Duddleston (1993), at 234. 20 None of the subdivisions were being planned at active dairy ranches; they were mostly former ranches in the southern section of the park, outside of the pastoral zone, that had already been shut down and often sold by their original operators. One long-time Point Reyes family, the Murphys, contemplated subdividing off a section of their holdings, but it was no longer an operating dairy, and would not affect their existing beef cattle operation. 21 Bryan McCarthy’s testimony, U.S. Congress, Senate Hearings (1961), at 89. He doubted many lots would sell, due to the cold climate, and pointed out that all of the existing summer homes were on the eastern side of Inverness Ridge, out of the main fog belt. 22 “Questions and Answers Concerning the Proposed Point Reyes National Seashore,” draft dated 2/23/62, at 13. 135 ten separate subdivisions, of which only 104 had been sold. Significantly, all of these subdivisions had come before the Marin Planning Committee for approval after the park

136

Figure 4.8: Chart from appraisal of Wildcat Ranch (Alemea/Bolema), August 15, 1962, by Edward P. Morphy (San Rafael), showing subdivision activity on the peninsula.

137 had been proposed.23 Subdivision may have been driven by the park proposal itself; discussion of the area as a national park unit made it appear more desirable, and developers were willing to subdivide despite the proposals, figuring that if the park was established they would be bought out anyway.24 However, park advocates consistently cited establishment of PRNS as a crucial solution to the threat of subdivision.25

Between the first park proposal and the ultimate passage of the bill in 1962, the plan for acquisition of the pastoral zone was in flux, subject to much discussion at both the 1960 and 1961 hearings.26 Yet the concerns of the local ranchers must have had some sway with their Congressional representatives.27 When NPS Director Conrad

Wirth tried to assert the need for legal flexibility to deal with individual ranch cases through negotiation, one Senator retorted: “You know what negotiation means. That means coercion.”28 When the Seashore was finally authorized, the pastoral zone was to remain in private ownership; the NPS was given condemnation authority only over

23 Appraisal of Alamea, Bolema and Point Reyes Land & Development Company parcels, compiled by Edward Morphy, San Rafael 8/15/62, “Chart of Subdivision Activity as of 8/6/62,” at 9. The first subdivision approved was the Drakes Beach Estates #1, first came before the Planning Commission on May 2, 1960, and was given final approval on Nov. 1, 1960. 79 lots had been sold by the time of this report. Of those, only 18 were built on before the NPS purchased the land and demolished most of the structures. PRNS files. 24 Boyd Stewart insists that the ranchers were not considering potential development when they opposed initial formation of the park; they just didn’t want anyone else telling them what to do with their land. It was only later, after the area was designated as parkland and subdividers began coming around quoting land values to them, that they even considered selling as an option: “They had been educated.” Lage and Duddleston (1993), at 259-60. 25 For example, Peter Behr referred to the 1960s as experiencing “a tremendous explosion” of development in the park; Lage and Duddleston (1993) at 115. This assertion has remained a big part of the continuing justification for the park, creating a consistent narrative that the are was on the brink of being overtaken by suburban sprawl. 26 The Marin County Board of Supervisors favored the smaller park proposal until 1961, when the combination of Peter Behr’s election and political pressure brought by a local newspaper against one of the other Supervisors changed the Board’s position to supporting the larger proposal. Interview with Peter Behr, Lage and Duddleston (1993), at 138. 27 In the 1961 Senate Hearings, it is particularly evident that several Senators are concerned about the locals being displaced, and imply that the NPS has not taken this issue seriously enough. Senator Dworshak (ID) actually scolds NPS Director Wirth during his testimony for the NPS’s lack of preparedness, at 220. 28 U.S. Congress, Senate Hearings (1961), at 221, Senator Dworshak speaking. 138 parcels smaller than 500 acres within the zone.29 Ranchers were free to sell to the NPS, but could not be compelled to do so.

The initial effort to acquire land on the Point Reyes peninsula did not go smoothly. The 1962 bill only authorized $14 million for purchase of lands, and this quickly ran out.30 The NPS apparently contributed to this by overpaying for the first ranch purchased (N or Heims Ranch).31 This one purchase then increased assessed property values for all other ranches in the area, meaning the NPS would be required to offer similar amounts to other landowners. A plan to acquire the Lake Ranch by exchange for lands owned by the BLM in Oregon fell through, meaning the ranch would need to be purchased with cash. By the time the initial allocation for land acquisition ran out, only roughly 15,000 acres had been purchased.32 By the spring of 1969 Point Reyes was referred to in the New York Times as “a patchwork park in trouble.”33 The inflated purchase prices also contributed to increased assessed property taxes for the remaining ranches. The tax burden became so great that many ranchers faced

29 Note that the pastoral zone was somewhat based on the Everglades model, leaving the private land as a “hole in the doughnut”; see U.S. Congress, House Hearings (1961), at 140, Director Wirth’s testimony. 30 The $14 million figure presumed that the pastoral zone would stay privately owned (and yet many of the first properties bought were in it), and that the Lake Ranch would be acquired by exchange rather than purchase. Also note Clem Miller’s widow recalls that he had known from the start, and had been “very open about it,” that the initial allocation would be inadequate, but felt it was necessary for the proposal to be accepted politically. “Clem said the only way to get this thing through was get the boundaries set, ask for the $14 million, which is what everybody thinks is an acceptable amount for a seashore, then come back later and get more money.” Lage and Duddleston (1993), at 16. 31 The data on this is somewhat conflicting. PRNS has on file two assessments of the property from 1962, one assessing its value at $875,000, the other at $974,200. The Ranch was purchased by the NPS in 1963 for $850,000. However, a 9/19/71 San Francisco Chronicle/Examiner article states that this ranch was first appraised in 1962 at $255,565. The article quotes Marin County Assessor Bert Broemmel as saying, “We damn near fainted away when we heard what they spent for the Heims property. It had been on the market before then at about half what the government paid.” (There is also some suggestion in the article that the NPS might have paid such a high price as gratitude to Heims for helping prevent subdivisions in the area.) In his oral history interview, Peter Behr similarly commented that he believed the NPS had “started offering prices that were too generous, and establishing bench marks which came back to haunt them later.” Lage and Duddleston (1993), at 142. The NPS itself used an estimated value of $200/acre in their calculations of the projected cost of establishing PRNS [U.S. Congress, Senate Hearings (1960), at 20]; the per-acre cost of the Heims Ranch is $762/acre. 32 N Ranch, C Ranch, F Ranch, Home Ranch (all in pastoral zone), and W Ranch (Bear Valley) had been purchased; Drake’s Beach Estates (S Ranch) had been purchased/condemned. Note that most of these purchases were not in the designated public use area (although W is huge). PRNS tract files. 33 Gladwin Hill, “A Patchwork Park In Trouble,” New York Times, August 5, 1969. 139 severe financial difficulties; for example, annual property taxes on the Wilkins Ranch in the Olema Valley went from approximately $1,200 in 1960 to $22,000 by the time it was purchased in 1971.34 California passed Williamson Act in 1965, which allowed ranches to be assessed strictly for their value as agricultural lands if they were part of a designated zone protected with easements, yet no Point Reyes ranch owners enrolled in this program. Also, the Internal Revenue Service still used fair market value, not Williamson Act-value, for calculating estate taxes, which meant that passing ranches

down between generations was still often prohibitively expensive.35 These changes in land values initiated by NPS actions likely contributed to changes in the property owners’ willingness to be bought out, as staying became a more and more expensive proposition. While scenic easements were considered as a land protection option in the original debate over the park proposal, they then disappeared from the discussion. From testimony at the Congressional hearings, this was clearly due to distrust at the NPS and Interior that the then-pro-development Board of Supervisors would not enforce the easement terms. Similarly, county zoning could have prevented many of the problems encountered in the pastoral zone. In 1966 NPS Director George Hartzog asked the Marin Board of Supervisors to re-zone all of West Marin as agricultural lands, thus avoiding the problems of both subdivision and escalating property taxes, but the Board believed they

could not legally do so, that it would constitute an inverse condemnation.36 Yet a few

years later the Board successfully zoned all of West Marin as agricultural land with a minimum plot size of sixty acres.37 This suggests that locally-controlled land protections might have worked effectively to prevent development, but were never given a chance. By 1969, the county had published a revised West Marin General Plan suggesting development for 150,000 people, and the owners of the Lake Ranch, impatient with the

34 Dewey Livingston, A Good Life: Dairy Farming in The Olema Valley -- A History of the Dairy and Beef Ranches of the Olema Valley and Lagunitas Canyon (1995), at 82. 35 U.S. Congress, House Hearings (1969), at 67-68. 36 Peter Behr, who was on the Marin Board of Supervisors at the time, suggests that this “earned [the Board] the undying enmity of George Hartzog.” Lage and Duddleston (1993), at 115. 37 See John Hart, Farming on the Edge (1991). 140 stalled NPS land exchange plan, had begun to proceed with a residential development within the park boundary. In that same year, NPS Director Hartzog testified before the House of a plan to sell off 9,208 acres within PRNS boundaries to developers, for residential and related commercial uses. This plan was “based on experience of some public utilities that had recovered part of reservoir projects costs by selling reservoir shoreline land for subdivision.”38 Hartzog apparently thought this was an inevitable step, since they did not have enough money to acquire the lands needed for the park. This sell- off plan was later prohibited by an amendment to the House bill; Representative Ryan of New York, who authored the amendment, said, “As a matter of public policy, a private country club development should not be created within the National Park System. Congress must neither countenance nor sanction the carving out of [such] enclaves of

private privilege.”39 All of these events triggered a new legislative effort to secure more money for land acquisition, called the “Save Our Seashore” campaign, led by former Marin County Supervisor Peter Behr and several other wealthy Marin locals who did not want to see Point Reyes developed.40 During the negotiations, Boyd Stewart served as a representative of sorts for the ranchers.41 At a meeting held at his ranch with Bryan McCarthy and most of the Point Reyes ranchers, Stewart assured them that if they were willing to allow the NPS to have the power to condemn, then the agency would probably

get the appropriations to pay them a fair price. Faced with soaring land values, other associated financial problems, and a sense that the park’s presence created a “cloud” on their land title anyway, the ranchers finally agreed.42 Thus the power of condemnation

38 Bill Duddleston “Introduction,” in Lage and Duddleston (1993), at viii. 39 Ibid. at xx. 40 The main instigator was Katy Miller Johnson, Clem Miller’s widow, who got Peter Behr involved, also enlisted a lot of Bay Area conservationists and political connections. See Lage and Duddleston (1993), Interview with Katy Miller Johnson, at 1-102. 41 This is interesting, in that most of Stewart’s ranch is not actually within the PRNS boundary, and so he was not greatly affected by the establishment of the park (although his ranch was shortly thereafter included in the GGNRA boundaries). 42 Interview with Boyd Stewart, Lage and Duddleston (1993), at 243-4. 141 was added to the final bill, signed by President Nixon on April 3, 1970, raising the total allocation of PRNS acquisition funds to $57 million.43 The NPS then rapidly acquired all the ranches within the park boundary, most purchased in 1971. This was followed by the establishment of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area in 1972, including the Olema Valley; these ranches were purchased soon after.44 So rather than remaining a new kind of park that included private ownership, Point Reyes ended up almost completely under national ownership.

43 Public Law 91-223 44 Note in the Fall 1970, with ironic timing, the Marin Board of Supervisors once again became anti- development, and the Williamson Act was amended and strengthened. See Hart (1991). 142

Figure 4.9: Changes in land ownership, from 1857-present (from Livingston 1993).

143

B. Tenure Arrangements

Many Point Reyes ranchers testified at the earliest hearings that leasebacks simply would not work for the dairies, arguing that limited-term leases would not provide enough security for such a capital-intensive industry.45 In addition, most of the families had only recently become owners; to have worked so hard only to once again become tenant-operators was a disheartening prospect.46 The fact that there are still operating ranches in West Marin surrounding the Seashore suggests that they might have survived with the right kind of support or protection from the county.47 Yet during the 1960s they became so financially constrained by inflated land values and property taxes, as discussed above, that buyout by the NPS seemed to be the only viable option. With most ranch acquisitions, the previous owners were given the option to retain a reservation of use and occupancy, allowing them to remain on the property for a set number of years, as if they still owned it privately.48 In exchange, the purchase price was reduced by one percent per year of the reservation.49 Most of the ranches received identical twenty-year reservations, although a few opted for a longer term. Non-ranch

45 For example, testimony of Albert Bagshaw, attorney for Mendozas, Nunes and Kehoes, as well as the Point Reyes Milk Producers Association, expressed concerns that ranchers might losing milk contracts if forced to move their dairy operations to conform with the NPS pastoral zone boundaries, or even just if they were under the uncertain tenure of leases. He also notes that privately-leased ranches are generally not maintained properly; “There is no pastoral splendor under a leased operation.” U.S. Congress, Senate Hearings (1960), at 153-56. Similar arguments were made at both the House and Senate hearings in 1961. 46 See Zena Mendoza’s rather emotional testimony, 1961 Senate hearings at 111; Marin County Supervisor James Marshall made the same point at the 1960 Senate Hearings, at 17. 47 Although Hart suggests that “Without the National Seashore, later preservation efforts might not have been possible at all.” Hart (1991) at 10. Politically, the Marin County Board of Supervisors shifted from pro- to anti-development stances several times during the 1960s, and so it is impossible to know the causal role of the park for certain. 48 Initially there was some confusion about how the terms of reservation would work: a letter written to Congress by Margaret McClure pointed out that, as then written, the reservation of right allowed “you and your sons” stay until the youngest is 30—but her youngest at the time was 52. U.S. Congress, House Hearings (1961), at 56. 49 This reduction in the purchase price could have major consequences for any properties that had recently been purchased. In the GGNRA lands, for instance, there were several instances of young families who could not afford the reduction in purchase price to obtain a reservation (as they had to pay back their full mortgage), and thus were forced to opt for a less-secure special use permit. 144 private residences were usually offered fifty-year reservations at Point Reyes; GGNRA legislation only allowed a maximum of twenty-five years. Most tenant operators were allowed to stay on special use permits, but a few were required by the NPS to relocate for reasons that are not clear.50 As the reservations of right expired, they have generally been replaced with “leases” or special use permits. The term “lease” was originally used, according to the Assistant Superintendent, to “convey a longer term and more secure arrangement than the five year special use permit document provided.”51 Early permits varied in their terms and language, but since 1995 they have become more standardized and with more precise

legal language.52 Also since 1995 all new or updated documents are called “permits,” as a legislative change NPS-wide allowed all parks to retain the rental funds at the park (rather than lease revenues going to the U.S. Treasury) as a cost recovery mechanism for permits. There are now two different permit documents in current use by the park: One is a shorter permit for unimproved lands, generally written for only five years but routinely renewed. The other is for dairies and improved properties, with more detailed language and a renewal clause beyond the first five years. This latter document still has the word “lease” on the cover along with the permit title. “Leases” are generally written for twenty years with five-year renewal increments, considered a way to give ranchers “more

security, as they’ve got some serious investments in the buildings, equipment, etc.”53 Yet the legal language in both “leases” and special use permits is nearly identical. The NPS has authority to cancel permits, although in practice it only does so in very rare

50 Ranches where tenants were allowed to remain on leases: Spaletta (C), Pierce (initially), Truttmans, R. Giacomini, Mary Tiscornia on Wilkins Ranch. Tenants had to leave at Heims (N) Ranch, DeSouza, and Hagmaier. 51 Email from PRNS Assistant Superintendent Frank Dean, 3/30/00. 52 Note that 1995 is the year Don Neubacher replaced John Sansing as Superintendent of the Seashore. 53 Interview with PRNS Assistant Superintendent Frank Dean, 4/4/00. 145 instances.54 If it does, however, the permittee has little recourse; they can take the case to the Federal Court of Claims, which can be very expensive, but even then the only remedy is damages, as they cannot get an injunction against the breach of contract. Being in a tenant relationship with the federal government takes away an extensive amount of individual flexibility in management. Under private ownership, even after selling development rights or other easement controls, ranchers can still decide to sell to another operator, or lease the ranch out, or change management methods. With government-controlled leasebacks, they are much more constrained in their choices: the ranch is limited to a specific number of cattle, only a single person holds the permit, and the NPS staff have much more leeway in revoking permits or otherwise steering land use

decisions.55 Everything from deciding what color to paint the ranch house to deciding to switch the dairy operation over to organic methods must be cleared with NPS staff first. Over time, this can decrease the local imprint on the landscape, bringing the ranches more and more in line with NPS values and priorities.

C. Infrastructure & Maintenance Issues

Infrastructure designed at the national level within the NPS has the effect of standardizing the landscape, making it more immediately recognizable as a national park unit. Some of these changes are as basic as adding the familiar brown and white signs, which are standard issue throughout the Park System. Most of the dairies already had their own signs, including the family’s name and which creamery they shipped their milk

54 The recent court case brought against PRNS by tenant Mary Tiscornia suggests that “leases” (special use permits with options to renew) are in practice no different than 5-year special use permits, as the NPS can unilaterally refuse the option to renew, as they did in her case. 55 The restriction to only a single name on the permit does not reflect the way dairies are operated, often with several partners in the business. When Earl Lupton died in September 2001, his business partner of more than ten years Manuel Brazil was unable to retain the special use permit to Lupton’s ranch, as Lupton’s name was the only one on the permit and the partners are not related. Brazil asserted that Lupton had told him that it was his wish that Brazil continue the operation, but PRNS staff maintain a policy of only offering a continuance of special use permits to direct family members. Transcript of the Citizen’s Advisory Commission, GGNRA/PRNS, 10/20/01. 146 to, yet the NPS added its signs as well, creating a stark contrast between the vernacular and official definitions of the landscape.

Figure 4.10: Dairy signs at Nunes (A) Ranch; note NPS sign in the background.

Similarly, visitors receive a free map of the Seashore, which was initially designed locally but by the early 1980s was produced according to the nationally-uniform “uni-grid” format. (Figure 4.11) The local NPS staff still provide most of the text for the map’s descriptions, but the actual design and production takes place at Harper’s Ferry Center, the NPS’s centralized interpretive media center. The effect of this consistent design and format is to generate “brand recognition”: signaling to visitors that they are indeed in a national park unit, and perhaps triggering expectations based on previous experiences in other national parks. The landscape is taken out of its local context and re-situated as part of a national system with consistent standards for appearance across the board. The design and re-design of local roads and trails can alter the landscape’s appearance toward a more standardized format. Almost all of the roads and trails in

147 Point Reyes are historic ranch roads, routes used by locals for generations.56 For example, the main road through the park, Sir Francis Drake Boulevard, dates back to the 1850s. It is actually maintained by Marin County, not by the NPS, and it remains a narrow, uneven, twisty road. In contrast, roads added by the NPS—the spurs to North and South Beaches,

56 None of the trails have any kind of indication that they are actually old ranch roads. 148

Figure 4.11: Cover of the uni-grid brochure/map for Point Reyes.

149 Chimney Rock, the Lighthouse, and Drake’s Beach, plus the Limantour Road on the eastern side of the ridge—were designed at the centralized NPS Denver Service Center, and are much wider and smoother, with broad shoulders and curbs, and usually correspondingly higher speed limits.57 These specifications were not designed with the particular traffic patterns at Point Reyes in mind; they are the standardized design of a national agency. They also create a different landscape character, suggesting a heavily- trafficked highway more than a backcountry lane.58

Figure 4.12: Intersection of county-maintained Sir Francis Drake Blvd (right) and the NPS-designed road to Drake’s Beach (left).

Buildings added by the NPS also steer the landscape away from its vernacular appearance and more toward a typical “national park-scape.” One of the most central buildings in any national park unit is the visitor center, as it usually serves as the primary

57 Prior access out to Limantour had been on Balboa Rd. in Inverness Park, but the residents there did not want it used as the main access route; there was a locked gate at the top of Balboa which only landowners had access through. Legislation passed in 1966 saying the NPS couldn’t use Balboa for access, so the NPS put in Limantour instead (to where it connected with the old route out). Apparently there was some local controversy at the time about the NPS cutting trees to make the road, some people thought it was too wide, etc. Interview with PRNS Assistant Superintendent Frank Dean 11/30/99. 58 For more detailed discussions of NPS architectural styles, see Ethan Carr, Wilderness By Design: Landscape Architecture and the National Park Service (1998), and Linda McClelland, Building the National Parks: Historic Landscape Design and Construction (1998). 150 source of information for visitors, and is often the first place they encounter in the park. Originally one of the old bunkhouses at Bear Valley Ranch, now used for administrative offices, doubled as the visitor center, but before long staff felt it did not provide adequate space for exhibits and visitor information. During the 1970s there was discussion of a plan to move the empty Randall House from the Olema Valley to Bear Valley and use it as the visitor center. However, this idea was eventually abandoned when private funding became available to build a new visitor center.59 The resulting structure, built in 1983, was designed by a San Francisco firm specifically to look pastoral, in keeping with the NPS’s “rustic” style.60 Yet it does not look anything like a local barn, despite ample examples in and around Point Reyes to model after; rather, it follows a more generalized idea of a barn.

Figure 4.13: Bear Valley Visitor Center, designed both to look “pastoral” and to blend in with the natural landscape. It has never been painted, in contrast to most peninsula ranch buildings.

59 In order to move the Randall House, the park staff would have to do a complete National Register eligibility determination for the building, which the Superintendent was apparently reluctant to do. 5/24/78 Memo from Tom Mulhern, Chief of Cultural Resource Management, Western Regional Office, to Superintendent Sansing, PRNS files. 60 Architecture firm was called Bull, Field, Volkman and Stockwell. “The intent was to design a building that fit with the surrounding landscape. Hence the design of a dairy barn. Many people over the years have said, ‘What a great job in renovating this old barn!’ It was never painted white [like the rest of the Point Reyes barns]. The designer and architects wanted it to ‘blend in’ more with the environment by keeping the ‘natural’ wood look.” E-mail from John Del’Osso, PRNS Chief of Interpretation, 12/3/99 and 3/27/00. 151

Figure 4.14: Hay barn at Pierce Ranch, dating back to the Shafter era.

Similarly, the visitor center at Drake’s Beach, built in the mid-late 1970s and remodeled in 1993, looks nothing like any of the local buildings; it conforms aesthetically more to the appearance of wharf buildings found in San Francisco or Monterey, emphasizing maritime linkages more than the pastoral surroundings.61 These additions create the “official” landscape that is visually distinct and separate from the vernacular buildings.

61 The 1993 remodel expanded the Center by 1,200 square feet. Prior to that, the center had no real exhibits, just a round table and chairs. Interview with John Del’Osso, PRNS Chief of Interpretation, 3/28/00. 152

Figure 4.15: Visitor Center at Drake’s Beach. Even ranches that remain occupied by former landowners are affected by NPS management rules and guidelines. Maintenance choices for the residents are somewhat limited by the fact that they are tenants of the Park Service, and must comply with its aesthetic standards and other rules regarding maintenance. Ranchers own their own equipment and cows, but not the ranch buildings, and are required to get formal NPS approval prior to making any major changes.62 If they need to add anything considered “unsightly” by the NPS, such as a doublewide trailer for employee housing, they are usually asked to put it somewhere where it can not be easily seen from the road, or at least to fence the “eyesore” off from public view.63 This leads to a decrease in the vernacular appearance of ranches and homes, which, instead of reflecting the residents’ particular choices and needs, become overlain with official aesthetic preferences. NPS ownership can also indirectly result in deteriorating conditions of the buildings themselves. Unlike most regular apartment renters, park residents are

62 Although sometimes they don’t; one staff member suggested they may think it’s easier to get forgiveness than permission. 63 This again emphasizes the importance of the landscape appearance as a view: the sense that parks aren’t “supposed” to have doublewides. Regarding design guidelines, PRNS Chief of Cultural Resources Gordon White said, “Design guidelines are how we want the park to look in situations where preservation mandates don't apply. As an example, at Kehoes, a ranch that doesn't have integrity, we asked that large plastic water tanks in a highly visible location at the center of the site be enclosed by a wood fence, mainly for eyeball.” Email from Gordon White, 4/5/00. 153 responsible for “cyclical maintenance”—painting buildings, fixing fences, etc.—and the NPS pays for major “capital improvements.” However, cyclical maintenance may be put off, or skipped entirely, to save money, often resulting in poorer condition of the historic resources.64 In a recent article, geographer Arnold Alanen noted the general trouble that historic preservation guidelines are often imposed on those who cannot afford to meet them.65 Uncertainty regarding the future of their operations, due to questions about permit renewal or distrust of park promises, can cause residents to invest less in maintenance of the ranches than they would if their tenure was more secure. Ranchers may also opt for lower-cost fixes that are less compliant with historical appearance or integrity, such as metal roofs instead of wood shingles. While NPS cultural resource staff are currently working toward splitting costs of more historically-accurate repairs with ranchers, an innovative approach to the old problem, this comes only after nearly

forty years of relative neglect to the condition of most of the ranches.66 And the resulting repairs continue to reflect national priorities, rather than local needs.

64 As of April 2000, the condition of the 218 historic structures in the park is 27% good, 60% fair, and 13% poor. PRNS Historic Structures Condition/Responsibility Report, April 2000. Eventually structural condition can deteriorate to the point where capital improvements, paid for by the NPS, are required. 65 Arnold R. Alanen, “Considering the Ordinary: Vernacular Landscapes in Small Towns and Rural Areas”, in Preserving Cultural Landscapes in America, Arnold R. Alanen and Robert Z. Melnick (2000), at 137-8. In addition, he argues that these regulations can come across as paternalistic, and cites a Michigan State Historic Preservation Office report in 1995: “the report also noted that ‘it may be important to allow owners to continue to modify their houses according to their own needs and preferences,’” despite possible deviations from historic preservation guidelines. 66 A historic preservation crew was hired in Spring 2000 to do emergency stabilization on ranches in the worst condition. 154

Figure 4.16: Deteriorating barn at Horick (D) Ranch. The collapsing section is actually a recent add-on to the original structure, and was removed by the historic preservation crew.

D. NPS “Attitude”:

Perhaps most important in the long term is the institutional assumption that once a place is a national park unit, it is different from the local landscape that surrounds it. It has been set off as something national in importance, it belongs to “The Public,” and locals are simply lucky to live so close. The boundary on the map becomes a symbolic fence—mere local on one side, official and national on the other. This attitude brings with it the standardization of the goals of management, that the Seashore is managed more and more like a “typical national park” and not according to local interests or concerns. While it can be hard to directly document an institutional attitude, it can be identified indirectly by looking at the relationship between the park as an entity and its surrounding communities. In the areas surrounding Point Reyes National Seashore, there is a strong sense of distance between the park and its local context, and a perceived arrogance or reluctance to cooperate on the NPS’s part, ignoring or avoiding local

155 concerns.67 Admittedly there is nothing requiring NPS to become involved with their neighbors; in fact, it has traditionally been a goal of the NPS that its employees be committed to the agency as a whole more than the particular park.68 Despite this, it is still a relevant data point, separating the park from the local communities and making it more of an island of national concerns. As early as the 1960 and ‘61 hearings, Point Reyes landowners were upset partly because no one from the NPS ever consulted with them as to what might be the best way to accommodate ranches within the proposed park.69 While NPS planning staff had contacted ranchers for information leading to the official Land Use Survey, they did not consult them in any way while considering different policy options for land ownership and management.70 One rancher explained their concerns: “We will have to be tenants to people who would not consider us and ask us as to the workability, or ask our local government, or present a report to them, and that makes us a little afraid to get into an agreement of that type.”71 This set the tone for the NPS approach to dealing with locals, starting the relationship off with a sense of wariness and distrust. The current NPS planning and decision-making processes have few mechanisms for local input. Any member of the public is allowed to attend public scoping sessions

67 For instance, at a 1998 community meeting called by Marin County Supervisor Steve Kinsey concerning the relationship between the NPS and surrounding communities, the key issue identified by the participants was “NPS arrogance,” lack of adequate communication with local communities, and unreliability—that NPS staff would often say one thing but do another. Stinson Community meeting, 10/29/98. 68 For instance, for most of NPS history, promotions only came with a change of location; there was no way an employee could “move up the ladder” while staying in the same park unit. 69 A letter from one of the landowners, Douglas Hertz, indicates that he is opposed not to the park itself but to “the method being used in forcing this project down the necks of the landowners, together with the hopeless lack of information disseminated by any department of the Government as to an exact program as to what is to be done with the land if, as, and when acquired.” U.S. Congress, House Hearings (1961), at 50. 70 The Land Use Survey also had a number of inaccuracies, including overestimating the percentage of ranches that were tenant-operated rather than owner-operated. Parts of the pastoral zone map were considered unrealistic by locals, as it excluded four of the largest dairies on the peninsula (A-D Ranches) and included some lands too steep for use as grazing land. See McCarthy testimony, U.S. Congress, House Hearings (1961), at 17, 21. Also Hertz’s letter, at 51, refers to the early 1957 and 1959 Seashore proposals as including no mention of leasing back ranches and “clearly show very little NPS familiarity with the area.” 71 Joe Mendoza’s testimony, U.S. Congress, House Hearings (1961), at 37. 156 and to submit formal comment on developing plans during the open public comment period, but there is no special consideration for local opinion; all public comments are treated with equal weight. This is true of the whole agency, but important as it functions locally to separate the NPS landscape as something apart from its surroundings. In addition, West Marin locals often feel that there is not enough attention paid to existing input or concerns.72 In part this was exacerbated by the make-up of the Citizens Advisory Council, which until recently was heavily dominated by representatives from San Francisco rather than West Marin.73 At a 1998 community meeting, one person suggested that the NPS would not pay any attention to a given local concern unless a

formal legal challenge was brought.74 This lack of mechanisms for input and the associated lack of responsiveness has resulted a great deal of local frustration with the agency.75 Another way the NPS often antagonizes locals is through overly vigorous enforcement of park rules. For example, in January 1997, two locals found a complete human skeleton on the western side of Tomales Bay.76 They reported the find to the NPS, but the following day revisited the site to find that the tide was washing some of the bones back into the bay. They then moved the remaining bones to higher ground, thinking it help protect the find from disappearing. NPS staff, however, were upset that they had moved the skeleton from its original location. Rather than simply issuing

72 For instance, at a public meeting in Stinson Beach, a major focus of citizens’ complaints was that NPS staff over the years have not been reliable in following their own published policies and guidelines, don’t implement what they say they’ll do, etc. Stinson Community meeting, 10/29/98. 73 More Marin-based members were added summer 2000, according to the recommendations of a local ad- hoc committee organized by Supervisor Kinsey. There are also some local concerns that the Advisory Commission is little more than a “rubber stamp” for the NPS; according to the Commission’s by-laws, “During public meetings, Commissioners should not debate directly with any member of the public. If Commissioners wish to express any criticism of National Park Service management such criticism will be addressed outside the public arena.” By-Laws of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area and Point Reyes National Seashore Advisory Commission (Corrected per 10/10/91 Commission meeting), Article IV (Operational Policies), Section 7. 74 Stinson Community meeting, 10/29/98. 75 For example, controversy broke out in early 2001 over PRNS possibly “secretly” promising Rancho Baulines to the PRBO without any kind of public input, ignoring the Bolinas Community Plan, etc. “Bolinas furious at park’s quiet Rancho dealings,” by Gregory Foley, Point Reyes Light, January 25, 2001. 76 The two men involved were James Horn of Point Reyes Station and Bobby Hill of Forest Knolls. 157 warnings not to do such a thing again, the NPS cited the two men for “possessing, disturbing, or destroying archeological resources,” with a fine of $100 each. Insisting there was no criminal intent, the two refused to pay, and eventually their case was dismissed; the judge determined that “the law against disturbing archaeological resources applied more to professional grave robbers than casual beachcombers.”77 This is one example of the NPS taking an extreme stance in enforcing its rules, without any consideration for intent or how such an action would be perceived locally. Other controversies have erupted over issues of community recreation use, affordable housing concerns, traffic, etc. These have all contributed to the sense of distance and distrust between the Seashore and its surrounding communities. Most recently this tendency has shown up in the NPS’s reluctance to make local exceptions with regard to leasing residences to former owners, despite a chronic lack of affordable housing in West Marin. When the GGNRA was established in 1972, most of the small towns within its borders were formally excluded, but the tiny communities of Tocaloma and Jewell, just east of Olema along Sir Francis Drake Boulevard, were not. The combined total of less than twenty homes were purchased by the NPS, allowing owners to retain 25-year reservations of use and occupancy. Most of these reservations recently expired, and while locals pleaded that some kind of special use permit or historic leasing process be allowed to keep people in their homes, many of which had been in a single family for generations, the NPS was not responsive, citing general NPS policy.78 These residents were described several times as having gotten a good deal on their rent for twenty-five years, but that now “the public interest” in the properties was more

77 “Court lets off pair; park has bone to pick,” by Stephen Barrett, Point Reyes Light, July 17, 1997. 78 In his presentation on the subject, Assistant Superintendent Frank Dean stressed that these were national criteria being applied to the situation. Transcript of January 23, 1999 Citizens Advisory Commission meeting, at 22. But note that a number of other national park units (for example, C&O Canal, Sleeping Bear Dunes) have made extensive use of the historic leasing program to keep historic residences occupied, and some parks (Cuyahoga, Boxley Valley) have even sold some residential properties back to private owners; neither of these options have been made use of, or even discussed, at PRNS. 158 important, even though the NPS did not yet know what public purposes the houses would be used for.79 This “attitude” has gotten in the way of attempts to extend agricultural land protections up the eastern side of Tomales Bay. In 1993 Congressional Representative Lynn Woolsey proposed legislation that would provide federal funding for the purchase of agricultural easements and development rights along the east side, allowing the ranches to stay privately owned while protecting the rural landscape from unwanted suburban expansion. However, this bill was met with a surprising degree of local opposition. Initially some landowners signed a petition saying they did not want

boundaries drawn until Congress actually appropriated money for the venture.80 Some ranchers also feared the bill represented a veiled attempt to expand the National Seashore, or that it would give the NPS authority to dictate their ranching practices within the protected zone whether they sold their development rights or not.81 While the opposition was not unanimous, it prevented the local Farm Bureau from taking a definite position on the bill, and gradually created an extensive rift amongst the local ranching community.82 The bill, reintroduced over several years, has been modified to provide greater assurance that all sales would be voluntary and that it would not expand PRNS, yet many ranchers remain skeptical. Of particular concern is that the Department of Interior would fund the agricultural easements, rather than the Department of

Agriculture. Regardless of the legislative wording, it is clear that some West Marin

79 Transcript of January 23, 1999 Citizens Advisory Commission meeting; discussion of the “value” of reservations at 19-20, possible public uses of buildings at 24. 80 “Some landowners fight park expansion,” by David Rolland, Point Reyes Light, 8/3/95. 81 Ranchers were not the only ones with this impression; Dan Smith, a legislative aide to Congressman Jim Hansen, chair of the Congressional subcommittee hearing the bill, was quoted as saying, “It's a very controversial bill, and it's a park bill—not an agricultural bill. I know a park bill when I see one. To say it's a solution for 'protecting' farmland is a very far-reaching idea… Once you put in a [federal] recreational area or seashore, the park begins to acquire. This happened with the Point Reyes National Seashore.” “Farmland protection bill won’t get a hearing soon,” by Marian Schinske, Point Reyes Light, 10/16/97. 82 In 1999, nearly half of the Farm Bureau’s board of directors quit after the group failed to reach a compromise position on the Woolsey bill. “Almost half of Farm Bureau board quits,” by Gregory Foley, Point Reyes Light, 10/14/99. 159 ranchers simply do not trust the NPS and its parent Department of Interior to refrain from acquiring their lands and expanding the park.

Summary of Theme One

At Point Reyes, the overall trend has still been one of gradual standardization and the replacement of local values and priorities with national ones. Through national ownership of the land, standardized lease agreements and criteria for management, and official infrastructure, the NPS has physically shaped the landscape into a “national park- scape,” increasingly more similar to other national park units than to its surrounding area. The separatist attitude that national NPS policies engender further causes divides between the Seashore and local communities. The vernacular landscape gradually has faded, to be replaced by an increasingly national, standardized, official park-scape.

IV. Theme Two: Working to Arrested

The second shift is a movement from a working landscape to an arrested, static landscape. As discussed in Chapter 2, preservation aims to prevent change, so an actively worked landscape can appear to threaten preservation goals. As a result of its institutional development, the NPS is accustomed to managing its units as though they were static in meaning and structure, with a single “authentic” appearance. Thus a working cultural landscapes such as the ranching industry at Point Reyes runs counter to most park personnel’s management experience and understanding. As a result, NPS staff tend to de-emphasize the role and importance of work in the landscape, moving it toward the more familiar model of a museum-like arrested scene.

160 There has been a significant decrease in the number of operating ranches within the Seashore since its establishment, despite specific Congressional intent that this traditional use of the land would remain. There has also been a drop in the number of historical structures actively used by locals, as more and more buildings are adaptively re-used for NPS purposes. Interpretation of the area’s history tends to emphasize the ancient past over more recent and on-going uses of the land. When the dairy industry is mentioned at all, it is usually in the context of being a historic use, something belonging to the past, rather than being part of an active and working cultural landscape. These elements combine to move the Point Reyes landscape away from active, working uses and toward a more static, arrested vision of the area’s cultural past.

A. Traditional Uses of Land:

Historically, the Point Reyes peninsula has supported as many as thirty-two operating dairy ranches. As of 1960 on the Peninsula there were fifteen dairy ranches on 19,000 acres, and ten beef cattle ranches on 23,000 acres.83 These totaled 7,000 dairy cows, representing 20% of dairy stock in Marin County, and 3,500 beef cattle, or 90% of the beef stock in the county.84 As discussed in the previous section, the original 1962 legislation was written so that the ranching industry would be able to continue within the park boundaries. Even when additional legislation in 1970 gave the NPS condemnation authority within the pastoral zone, Congress clearly directed continuing ranching as a permanent part of the Seashore. When a Senator asked NPS Director Conrad Wirth in the 1961 Senate hearings whether the proposed pastoral zone would be kept in grazing in perpetuity, Wirth answered affirmatively.85 In forming a general plan for the park over fifteen years later, NPS staff wrote, “Although the establishment of the seashore and

83 NPS, Land Use Survey (1961), at 1. 84 U.S. Congress, Senate Hearings (1961), at 186, Mr. Davis’ testimony. 85 U.S. Congress, Senate Hearings (1961), at 223, Senator Dworshak’s question. 161 influences within the dairy industry have resulted in a reduction of agricultural activity at Point Reyes, Congress clearly intended that the ranches continue to operate.”86 Despite these intentions, the number of working ranches within the boundaries has dwindled significantly since the Seashore was established. Today there are only six dairies still in operation on the peninsula: Nunes (A Ranch), Mendoza and Son (B Ranch), Spaletta (C Ranch), McClure (I Ranch), Kehoe (J Ranch), and Lobaugh and Mendoza (L Ranch). A seventh dairy, the Horick operation at D Ranch, shut down in 1997 when the permit holder, Vivian Horick, died. There are also five beef cattle ranches: Lunny (G Ranch), Grossi and Evans (H Ranch), Grossi (M Ranch), Rogers (formerly part of M Ranch), and Murphy (Home Ranch). In addition, several old ranch

sites are leased for cattle grazing.87 In total, 17,040 acres on the peninsula are currently being grazed.88 As discussed in the first section of this chapter, all remaining ranches operate on either reservations of right (Kehoe and Murphy) or special use permits. Appendix B contains specifics of ranch data from the peninsula.

Figure 4.17: Dairy cows waiting to be milked at Spaletta (C) Ranch.

86 NPS, Assessment of Alternatives for the General Management Plan, GGNRA/PRNS (1977), at 314. 87 E, F, and N Ranches are currently leased for grazing only. On E Ranch, two employees and their families reside in the existing buildings. PRNS files. 88 Presentation on PRNS Vegetation Management by Plant Ecologist Barbara Moritsch, 10/26/99. 162

In the Olema Valley, there are no longer any dairies; remaining are three beef ranches (R. Giacomini, Rogers and McFadden), five old ranch sites now grazed (Randall, Lupton, Truttman, E. Gallagher, and Genazzi), and two horse ranches (Stewart and Wilkins).89 On other GGNRA lands administered and managed by PRNS, referred to as the Tocaloma area, there are three beef ranches (Zanardi, McIsaac and Cheda) and two ranch sites used for grazing (Jewell and N. McIsaac). Also the Waldo Giacomini Ranch, located just outside the original park boundaries at the bottom of Tomales Bay, is in the process of being purchased by NPS for inclusion in the GGNRA, with the dairy operation slated to shut down within a few years. Appendix C contains specifics of ranch data for the Olema Valley and Tocaloma area. While the trend has clearly been toward fewer operating ranches within the park boundaries, is it possible to attribute this change to NPS management? Certainly other causes have contributed to this decline. There has been an overall reduction in the number of dairies in West Marin over this same time period, due to increased competition from large dairies in the Central Valley and more stringent environmental regulations,

particularly those concerned with water quality.90 However, many of the dairy operations that ceased due to these pressures changed over to beef ranching; for example, the Lunny (G) ranch switched to beef in the mid-1970s, when compliance with state

environmental regulations became too expensive.91 Yet there are also a number of instances where ranches, either beef or dairy, have gone out of production entirely as a direct result of some action taken by park management. These take three general forms: NPS purchase of land outside the pastoral zone, where owners were not given an option

89 The horse operation at Wilkins Ranch ended in May 2000, when the tenant was evicted to make way for a new Environmental Education Center. In addition, Earl Lupton died in September 2001, and his business partner is not allowed to continue their 70-head grazing operation at the ranch. PRNS staff say that the Lupton ranch will stay in agricultural use, but first the land needs to be rested, and a ranch plan needs to be developed; it is not clear how long this will take. Transcript of the Citizen’s Advisory Commission, GGNRA/PRNS, 10/20/01. 90 Interview with rancher Sharon Doughty, Point Reyes Station, January 26, 2001. 91 Livingston (1993), at 200. 163 to remain; owners in the pastoral zone or GGNRA leaving ranching entirely, either at the time of sale or upon retirement; and the NPS deciding not to renew a lease or Special Use Permit. Each of these processes will now be examined more closely. The first of these ways in which the NPS has caused ranches to cease operation is through purchase of properties outside of the designated pastoral zone. This area, the southern district of the park, was first intended as the primary public use area of the Seashore, and was later designated as wilderness. However, historically it supported a number of ranches, several of which were still occupied and operational at the time of NPS acquisition: The Bear Valley (W), New Albion (R), Laguna (T) Ranches were all

still actively in use when purchased in 1963, 1970, and 1971, respectively.92 Because these ranches were not in the pastoral zone, their owners were not given the option of a reservation of right, and were required to relocate. While this was not unexpected, given the way the legislation was written, it still represents a decrease in numbers of working ranches as a result of NPS purchase. The second form of decrease in ranches occurred when owners within the pastoral zone or the GGRNA lands, areas where ranching was allowed to remain, instead chose to leave. Their departures generally came either at the time of NPS purchase, or upon retirement; their grazing lands were leased to other ranchers in some cases, but the ranches themselves ceased to function. Some of these departures were voluntary; for

example, the Gallagher family sold F Ranch to the NPS in 1966, although they retained a special use permit to use the ranch for grazing. Similarly, when E Ranch was purchased in 1971, Marvin Nunes and his mother Tessie Nunes Brazil decided to relocate the dairy operation to Sonoma County rather than remain in the park.93

92 New Albion was still operating as a dairy; Laguna and Bear Valley were both beef ranches. 93 Their move raised the legal question as to whether the NPS was responsible to pay for improvements at the new ranch, to bring it up to the same production capacity as E Ranch. In 1974 the family was asked to prove that their move to Sonoma was a direct result of having been acquired by NPS. The park then denied liability; Brazil and Nunes appealed in December 1977, won in November 1979. The NPS then appealed this decision, but appeal was denied (twice) in 1980. PRNS tract files. 164 In other cases, the departure of the owner was not voluntary; for reasons that are not entirely clear, James Lundgren was not offered a reservation of right for his parcel at the old K Ranch.94 Instead, the property was condemned by the NPS in 1975. Lundgren insisted that he was entitled to a reservation, just like other ranch owners on the peninsula, but the court disagreed. He was instead granted a 50-year reservation of occupancy for non-commercial residence on two acres (the old home site), and compensation for the remaining 339 acres of land. Yet he was still not completely deterred; in 1976 he put some portion (about $20,000) of his proceeds from the condemnation award into an escrow account to pay for a reservation of use. He also

continued to run livestock on the condemned 339 acres.95 A 1981 letter from Lundgren to his lawyer indicates that he felt he had been “discriminated against” because he was not given a reservation.96 In a less dramatic case, Pierce Ranch was also condemned by the NPS, although the partnership that owned the ranch did not protest the condemnation suit.97 What exactly constitutes “voluntary” departure can be unclear; ranchers’ decisions to end operations voluntarily may be based on pressure from the NPS, or a general feeling that operating as a tenant rancher is unworkable. For example, the Truttmans retired in 1990 from their Olema Valley ranch with no heirs to take over operations; their grazing lands were then leased to an adjacent rancher. However, the

94 The other three tracts that make up K Ranch, including Deep Cove Ranch, Laird’s Landing, and a small tract occupied by artist Clayton Lewis, were all threatened with condemnation before the various owners agreed to sell to the NPS. This raises serious questions about what it means to be a “willing” seller. PRNS tract files. 95 The NPS billed him for rent, which he refused to pay; by May 1982 his bill totaled $18,057.69. His cattle operation was described by park staff as “unsightly” and “economically marginal,” with grazing cattle were brought in and out “somewhat in the nature of a feedlot operation” by James Lundgren Jr. They offered him a special use permit for grazing in 1981 if he would pay his overdue bill. However, a memo from the PRNS Superintendent to the Regional Director, Western Regional Office, dated 3/5/81, suggests that they wanted Lundgren to vacate his 2-acre reservation and convey it to the NPS before giving him a grazing permit (possibly in exchange for the past due rent). Eventually the livestock were evicted in 1982 for unlawful possession and use of the 339 acres. PRNS tract files. 96 PRNS tract files. 97 A condemnation suit was filed by NPS against Bahia Del Norte Land and Cattle Co. on 8/20/71. The final judgement for condemnation was made on 1/22/73, and the partnership immediately agreed to amount of just compensation. Title to tract passed the same day. PRNS tract files. 165 PRNS Superintendent had never been as supportive of their ranch operation as he was of others. For example, when the number of cattle grazed on the property exceeded the permitted herd size, the Superintendent responded with an unusually strongly worded memo, a bill for the excess grazing pressure, and a threat of additional fines if the herd was not reduced within a month’s time.98 In addition, he arranged to lease the land to the other family long before the Truttmans actually retired: a letter addressed to the Truttmans in 1984 informed them that their grazing permit would be reallocated “once you decide to discontinue operations,” even though the Truttmans had no plans at the time to do so.99 This kind of pressure from NPS staff appears to have contributed to a gradual loss of ranches by attrition. Finally, some ranches have gone out of operation when the NPS decided not to renew a special use permit or lease. When the Pierce Point Ranch was acquired in 1973,

it came with a long-time tenant rancher, Mervyn McDonald and his family.100 Almost immediately after the purchase, the NPS began proceedings to remove McDonald from the ranch.101 Park staff had considered Pierce as a location for a “living ranch” exhibit since 1968, and soon after the ranch was acquired, all of Tomales Point was tentatively included in a proposed wilderness area for the Seashore; either way, NPS staff felt McDonald could no longer stay as a tenant. McDonald insisted that the NPS could not force him to leave until he had found a replacement ranch, and continued his beef

operations on two successive two-year special use permits, the latter of which expired on

98 Memo from Superintendent Sansing to Frank and Armin Truttman, 10/30/86, PRNS administrative files. Note that the excess cattle were due to confusion as to whether the stocking level included heifers and calves or referred to adult cattle only. 99 Letter from Superintendent Sansing to Armin and Frank Truttman, dated 2/10/84. PRNS tract files. 100 McDonald had been foreman of the ranch when the McClures still owned it; the McClures sold the ranch to the Bahia Del Norte Land and Cattle Co. in 1966, after John McClure died, leaving the ranch to his wife Dorothy and his brother David. David felt he could not run the ranch on his own, and Dorothy could not afford to buy out David’s share, so they were forced to sell. McDonald then stayed on as a tenant rancher with beef cattle. Interviews with Dorothy McClure, conducted by PRNS Ranger Diana Skiles on 6/9/77, 5/29/79, and 9/18, 10/1 and 10/9/80. PRNS Archive, Box H3012. 101 PRNS Archive, Box H3012. There is a mention of discussions with McDonald regarding his relocation on 7/29/74 in Squad Meeting Minutes, file folder A4031, PRNS files. 166 October 31, 1978.102 In the meantime, Pierce Ranch had been included inside the designated wilderness boundary, and was considered the prime location for establishing a transplanted tule elk herd. McDonald was finally evicted in December of 1979.103 Despite official support for the remaining ranches from PRNS administration, recently another peninsula dairy, the Horick/D Ranch, went out of operation when permit holder Vivian Horick died in 1997. The NPS requires that only one person be designated as the holder of a special use permit, but Horick’s three heirs disagreed over who would take over the permit and the ranch operation. After waiting eighteen months, the NPS decided that enough time had passed and simply cancelled the permit. Now it is not certain what the fate of the ranch will be; the park could lease the land to another rancher for grazing, let it go fallow, or use buildings adaptively for some other purpose. However, none of the discussions have suggested that another dairy operator, or even a beef rancher, move in to the buildings and keep the ranch actually working. In the Olema Valley, the Lupton Ranch ceased operation after Earl Lupton’s death in September 2001, and there is some concern that a similar pattern may hold for the Ralph Giacomini Ranch, where the current permit holder is likely to retire soon; NPS staff have not made clear their intentions for whether these ranches will stay active or not.104

102 The NPS made some effort to help McDonald locate a farm, but according to an interview with him in 1979, all the ranches they suggested were far out of his price range. “Pierce Point’s last roundup,” by B. G. Buttemiller, Point Reyes Light, 12/6/79. A letter was written to Representative Burton from C. Malcolm Watkins, Senior Curator of Cultural History at the Smithsonian, dated 3/10/76, arguing that the Lower Pierce Ranch was lost to neglect, and that he fears the same fate will befall the Upper Ranch. Cites the 15 years of McDonald’s tenure on the ranch, and refers to importance of representing the history of “ordinary” people: “In California one should not have to be a Crocker or a Shafter to be recognized and remembered as having made history there...” 103 He eventually was offered a ranch near Marshall by his friend, Alvin Gambonini. The new ranch was only about half the size of Pierce, meaning McDonald had to reduce the size of his herd. “Evicted rancher staying close,” by Michael Gray, Point Reyes Light, 5/29/80. The timing of the final eviction meant McDonald had to sell cows off in winter, at lower prices that if he’d been allowed to wait a few more months. “Pierce Point’s last roundup,” by B. G. Buttemiller, Point Reyes Light, 12/6/79. 104 The NPS also recently declined to renew the special use permit for the Wilkins Ranch (Rancho Baulines), which will be discussed in more detail in the next section below. 167

Figure 4.18: House at the now-vacated Horick Ranch.

The cumulative loss of nine dairies and five beef ranches from the peninsula during the Seashore’s history has seriously reduced the working character of the Point Reyes landscape. NPS management has had the overall effect of dividing and discouraging the ranching community, thus contributing to its diminution. Some of this division has stemmed directly from unequal treatment of individual ranching families by the former Superintendent and his staff. Furthermore, it can be difficult for ranchers to plan into the future when the Seashore has an unclear policy toward their operations. When ranches go out of operation for whatever reason, there is no mechanism for finding another tenant, so gradually the number of ranches has dwindled; unless all of the existing dairies get passed down to members of the same families, it seems likely that eventually all active ranching will disappear from Point Reyes.

B. Adaptive Re-use and Disuse of Ranches

Some ranches were never leased at all after NPS purchase, but have been used for agency purposes instead. This is known as adaptive re-use, maintaining the former ranch

168 buildings for park needs such as administrative offices, staff housing, and equipment storage. Within the Seashore, these include: Bear Valley (W) Ranch, which became NPS administrative offices; Laguna Ranch, transformed into a youth hostel; a few houses near Limantour, one near M Ranch, and the main ranch house at Pierce, all used for staff housing.105 An old school building on the former South End/Palomarin Ranch is now used to house the Point Reyes Bird Observatory field station. In the Olema Valley, the Hagmaier Ranch was used for equipment storage and staff housing; recently it has been converted to office space for the new Pacific Coast Learning Center.

Figure 4.19: Administrative offices at Bear Valley.

While adaptive re-use keeps the historic resources in use and maintained in good shape, it does not necessarily maintain the traditional land uses or the community “fabric.” It retains the appearance of a historic landscape, but one that is arrested, not working—no longer actively the part of locals’ lives. In a similar way, lands leased for pasture still have some of the appearance of their traditional use, but are less of a

105 Note that a house at N Ranch was used for housing for several years, but was later knocked down in 1976. Squad Meeting Minutes, file folder A4031, PRNS files. 169 substantial or personal a part of the ranchers’ lives than when they support an active ranch operation. From a cultural landscape perspective, adaptive re-use of buildings is preferable to complete removal of historic structures and/or construction of new additions, but it increasingly seems to be seen by the NPS staff as “as good as” continued traditional use, particularly residential. One of seven guidelines for the park’s current General Management Plan update states: “Before any new construction is planned, historic structures will be considered for rehabilitation and adaptive reuse.” This suggests that, if no historic structures are currently available for use, management may remove current residents to make way for adaptive re-use. For example, a number of reservations of right and occupancy recently expired in the towns of Tocaloma and Jewel, located along Sir Francis Drake Boulevard within GGNRA lands administered by PRNS. None of these residents were permitted to stay, despite active community protest of this move,

because the NPS has a number of proposed adaptive uses for the buildings instead.106 This process is also occurring at the Wilkins Ranch (Rancho Baulines), where the NPS recently declined to renew the long-time tenant’s special use permit so as to make way for a new Environmental Education Center. The basis for this move is the 1980 PRNS General Management Plan, which names the ranch as a likely site for such a center if demand warrants.107 It is not clear on what basis the PRNS administration has decided

that the area needs an additional Environmental Education Center.108 Furthermore, the 1980 GMP is currently undergoing revision—yet the administration went ahead with the eviction before the revised plan would be completed. This action has raised a great deal of local controversy, with calls for greater public input into the decision-making process,

106 Transcript of January 23, 1999 Citizens Advisory Commission meeting. 107 GGNRA/PRNS General Management Plan, 1980, at 59; emphasis is mine. 108 The Clem Miller Environmental Education Center already exists in the park at the old Laguna Ranch site, and the NPS has just established a new Pacific Learning Center for facilitating research in the Seashore at the old Hagmaier Ranch. There are also a number of other privately-run centers in West Marin, including the Audubon Canyon Ranch, located just south of the Wilkins Ranch, the Marine Mammal Center on the Marin Headlands, the Point Reyes Field Seminars Program, the Point Reyes Bird Observatory, Slide Ranch, and the Marconi Center. 170 but park officials did not alter their plans, and the tenant was evicted in May 2001.109 As an odd coda to this controversy, at an October 2001 Citizen’s Advisory Commission meeting, discussion by PRNS staff and the Commissioners suggests that it is now considered “inappropriate for there to be a large scale educational center there,” and that instead the ranch will be used as a “field station” or research center.110 This does not match the original stated purpose for the ranch, that the GMP mandated it become an environmental education center, that was used to justify the tenant’s eviction in the first place.

Figure 4.20: Wilkins Ranch/Rancho Baulines as a horse ranch.

109 Tenant Mary Tiscornia brought a legal suit against the NPS in 1998 to try to prevent her eviction, but lost in court. In a local article (“Bolinas scolds park over Rancho plan,” by Gregory Foley, Point Reyes Light, 11/22/2000), Superintendent Neubacher was described as saying that “after lengthy court proceedings regarding her lease, Tiscornia could be granted no special consideration” (at 18). This issue generated considerable controversy in the local community, as expressed in public meetings, letters to the editor of the Point Reyes Light, and a guest column by Steve Matson, Chairman of the Bolinas Committee on Park Planning, Bolinas Public Utility District (“Park Service shouldn’t be in a rush to alter Rancho Baulines’ character,” 12/28/00). Included among his arguments is the statement that the current land use at the ranch is an important component of the Olema Valley historic cultural landscape, and that the Park Service had “erred by removing Rancho Baulines from the 1980 Management Plan update without due public notification.” 110 Transcript of the Citizen’s Advisory Commission, GGNRA/PRNS, 10/20/01, at 53. 171 In some cases, NPS-owned buildings were allowed to stand empty after purchase, rather than adaptively re-used. Unfortunately, buildings deteriorate much faster when they are empty rather than occupied, eventually becoming too expensive to repair, at which time they are often torn town.111 Even if they are not removed, empty ranch buildings that have been boarded up contribute to a sense of an arrested landscape, one where the original inhabitants are long gone and their land use activities are a thing of the past. Even if the buildings are maintained and/or restored, the result, as described recently by Francavigilia, is “a serene, bucolic place, a still-life rather than an active, bustling place full of strife and difficulties.”112 One such example is the Upper Pierce Point Ranch, which went out of operation in 1979 to make way for the tule elk herd on Tomales Point. Between 1968 and 1976, Pierce Ranch was often proposed as an ideal site for a “living ranch” exhibit, which

would allow Seashore visitors to see how a working dairy operates.113 Even after the site was included within the wilderness area boundary in 1976, the NPS apparently continued to consider adaptive use options; a Request For Proposals (RFP) to lease the ranch was issued as late as 1986, for either private for-profit or not-for-profit undertakings by individuals, associations, or organizations.114 No tenant was ever chosen, though.115 The ranch, which had been occupied for roughly 120 years, is now completely frozen in time; it is used for self-guided historic interpretation of the ranching industry circa the

111 In the 1977 Assessment of Alternatives for the General Management Plan, “neglect of cultural features” was one of three primary problems facing GGNRA/PRNS & hence the need for planning. “Some of the most important cultural features of the park are suffering from lack of use” (at 5). Note that NPS removal of buildings will be discussed under theme 3. 112 Francaviglia (2000), at 58. 113 Historic Structures Report, Pierce Ranch, by Richard Borjes, Regional Historical Architect and Gordon Chappell, Regional Historian, January 1985, at 8. Note 8/13/68 Memo from John A. Hussey, Acting Regional Chief of Interpretation, thanking for a draft report on living farm possibilities—he suggests adding a “tea room (high quality, English country atmosphere)” to assist with operating costs. 114 PRNS Archive Box H3012, “History, Pierce Point Ranch.” The file only contains the RFP, not any indication of whether the NPS received any proposals. 115 Note that the files did not contain any applications or discussion of such. Not clear whether that is because there weren’t any, or simply because they were not filed with the other archived material. 172 1880s, and most of the buildings stand empty and boarded up.116 “Living ranch” proposals continued to be considered through the 1980s, but none was ever established.

Figure 4.21: Pierce Ranch in fog.

A somewhat similar fate has befallen the Randall House in the Olema Valley. The two-story Victorian residence, built roughly 1885, was occupied until 1973. Shortly after NPS purchase in 1974, the property was evaluated by the Regional Historic Preservation Team, and was described as being “in good condition,” as was the barn to rear of house.117 However, as it sat empty close to the main road, it was soon vandalized and began to deteriorate. The Superintendent at the time made it clear that he preferred to demolish the building and restore the site to natural conditions.118 However, locals

116 Except the main house, which is used for park housing. 117 8/9/74 Memo from Regional Historic Preservation Team, Western Regional Office (WRO), to Associate Regional Director, WRO, re: evaluation of house done on 7/12/74. They suggested the house be used for residential or office purposes. PRNS files, code H3015 -- Historic Structures (Randall House). The barn was removed in December 1975; Squad Meeting Minutes, file folder A4031, PRNS files. 118 A reply memo from PRNS Superintendent dated 8/22/74, disagrees with the above report, stating that 1) money would be better spent on residences at nearby Hagmaier Ranch, supposedly in better condition, and 2) Randall House, contrary to the report, is not in good condition—the roof leaking and needs replacing, etc. A later memo dated 3/22/75 from the Associate Director, NPS Professional Services, notes a large discrepancy between description of the house’s condition in the 8/9/74 report and a Board of Survey report dated 10/17/74. Suspects the Board of Survey must be “a serious exaggeration of existing conditions even allowing for vandalism.” Believes building should be retained, repaired and perhaps used for employee housing. PRNS files, code H3015 -- Historic Structures (Randall House). 173 began to protest the park’s plans for removal, and the NPS staff requested funds for basic stabilization and repair.119 First the building was proposed for use by the Coastal Parks Association, which at the time was using space in Bear Valley Information Center; later the NPS considered moving the house to Bear Valley, where it would be used as a visitor center. While the NPS went back and forth between possible plans, the empty house continued to deteriorate. By 1981, the cost estimates for repair had skyrocketed, and, despite the fact that the building had been determined eligible for listing on the National Register, the Superintendent once again proposed to tear down the building.120 Although a total of twenty-one people or organizations inquired about leasing the property between 1979-81, PRNS officials did not pursue any proposals, nor did they put out a formal RFP

until 1983, which also did not result in any accepted proposals.121 Eventually the Townsend’s Big-Eared Bat (Plectotus townsendi), a rare species, was discovered roosting in the attic of the house; for a house that faced demolition at the hands of the NPS for years, it is now ironically protected as natural habitat. Because the presence of humans would disturb the roosting bats, the historic house will be maintained in good condition but cannot be used for any purpose.122 The boarded-up house is highly visible along

119 The initial cost estimates for repair varied widely, from $9,840 (estimated by Robert Cox, Historical Architect, WRO, on 1/15/76) to $37,800 (Chief of Maintenance, PRNS, 6/18/75). PRNS files, code H3015 -- Historic Structures (Randall House). 120 Robert Cox revised his initial cost estimate to $63,000 on 9/17/81; Superintendent Sansing replied two months later on 11/17/81 with his own revised estimate of $131,690. Eligibility for listing was formally determined on 8/29/79 by SHPO and National Register staff, despite disagreement from Regional and Washington Office NPS historians. PRNS files, code H3015 -- Historic Structures (Randall House). 121 11/17/81 Memo from PRNS Superintendent to Regional Director, WRO, reporting that there had been 21 “fruitless inquiries and discussions” over the past two years with people regarding adaptive use of the Randall House. Because these discussions were only informal, their names and proposals were not recorded. James E. Zwaal, who proposed leasing the building and accepting all responsibility for restoration, noted in a 3/14/83 letter to the park that in his discussions with the PRNS he had “only encountered discouragement,” and that removal of the Randall House would only serve “an administration that wishes to eliminate unwanted responsibility.” PRNS files, code H3015 -- Historic Structures (Randall House). 122 The PRNS restoration crew is planning to replace the roof soon – will do it during the late fall, when the fewest bats are likely to be around, and will most likely build a temporary structure for them to use while it is under construction. 174 Highway One, and is often cited by locals as an example of poor park management of historic buildings.123

Figure 4.22: The Randall House alongside Highway 1.

Adaptive use keeps historic buildings in use and in good shape, but removes them from their original local contexts of use as ranches and family homes, instead becoming offices, employee housing, and public facilities. That PRNS management seems unperturbed by the prospect of evicting tenants in order to make way for adaptive uses, particularly after the large numbers of buildings previously removed by the NPS because they had no immediate adaptive use (as will be discussed in the next section), raises concerns about the future of the working ranch landscape.124 Both adaptively-used buildings and vacant ones contribute to the movement toward an increasingly static,

123 There is some concern that this process will take place again at the Wilkins Ranch, if there is no new tenant ready to move in when the existing permit ends in (May 2001). While the PRBO has been proposed as tenant, along with PRNS’s new environmental education center, there are remaining concerns that maintenance costs will turn out to be prohibitive for the group. 124 Note also the buildings at Hamlet, on the eastern side of Tomales Bay—purchased in 1987 and determined eligible for listing on National Register—in 1997 the park planned to demolish almost all of the dilapidated buildings. They have not yet done so, but neither have they done any restoration work; cost is a major impediment. 175 museum-like landscape. Adaptive use also recasts the landscape away from local history and more toward the official “parkscape.”

176 C. Interpretation of ranches as “historic” rather than cultural resources:

Point Reyes does not have an extensive amount of interpretive materials regarding the ranches at all (for more thorough discussion of this lack, see Theme 3), and what little it does have tends to situate the ranches as “historic” rather than current-day interests. This in part reflects past attitudes within the NPS as a whole for what constitutes “historic” resources; these attitudes have broadened extensively in the past decade or so. However, there also seems to be a persistent reluctance to provide the public with information acknowledging the ranches as present-day cultural resources. Instead, where they are interpreted at all, ranches are posited as only interesting due to their historic lineage. The earliest interpretation of history at Point Reyes did not include agriculture at all, but rather focused on the more “ancient” past. Between exhibits at the Bear Valley Visitor Center and the Kenneth C. Patrick Visitor Center at Drake’s Beach, there is still far more information provided about Sir Francis Drake, even though most scholars now believe he never landed at Point Reyes, than about the more extensive and recent agricultural uses of the land.125 Early discussions of historic resources in the Seashore focused intensely on the possible Drake legacy, overlooking the dairies, radio and military history, and other agricultural uses almost entirely.126 A preliminary draft of a Historical Resource Management Plan written in May 1968 identified the main historic theme for PRNS as “Early Explorations,” with Native American populations and early

American settlement as sub-themes.127 This draft plan recommends that a formal

125 Exhibits at Bear Valley were designed by Daniel Quan and Jane Glickman in 1983. Park staff were included in discussions of what to include in the exhibits. Personal communication, John Del’Osso, Chief of Interpretation, 3/28/00. 126 See, for example, all the references to Drake in the 1960 and 1961 hearings. Note that the Miwok Indians were glossed over as well; for more detail on the Miwok experience with the park, see Jennifer Sokolove, Sally K. Fairfax, and Breena Holland, “Managing Place And Identity: Thoughts On The Coast Miwok Experience,” in press, Geographical Review. 127 The settlement sub-theme included the Mexican rancheros, initial settlement by pioneer Americans, and the Shafter era, but no other mention of ranching. “Unrelated themes” included lighthouses, shipwrecks, 177 historical structures report be done “to ascertain whether or not Point Reyes has any Historical Structures, beyond the Lighthouse and the Olema Lime Kilns.”128 The numerous other buildings dotted across the landscape were simply too local or commonplace to be considered as part of authentic “history.” By 1973, a few ranch complexes began to be recognized for their historic value; a memo indicates that an NPS historian visited the park and recommended six structures or complexes of buildings—the Point Reyes Light Station, the Coast Watchers’ Stations, the Point Reyes Life Saving Station, the Home Ranch, the Pierce Point School, and Upper Pierce Point Ranch—be protected as historic resources.129 As late as 1980, the official Historic Resource Study recognized only two PRNS ranches, Home and Pierce, as

qualifying for nomination to the National Register.130 The Olema Valley was recommended in the same study for preservation as a potential historic district, including the seven ranches between Truttman in the north to Wilkins in the south.131 None of these resources, in either PRNS or GGNRA, included working dairies. There has never been any comprehensive public information about the pastoral zone itself. There is the one interpretive plaque describing the pastoral landscape, but it is very hard to find; rather than being centrally located or near the entrance to the pastoral zone, it is tucked away on the spur road to Drake’s Beach, with no paved turnout or “Exhibit Ahead” sign to indicate its presence to visitors.132 A 1989 “Interpretive

the 1906 earthquake, prohibition and bootlegging at Point Reyes, and the development of the National Seashore. May 1968 Draft #1 of Historical Resource Management Plan, PRNS files 128 May 1968 Draft #1 of Historical Resource Management Plan, PRNS files. 129 Ross Holland, the author of the memo, visited some ranches but not others. Of those he visited, he usually recommended that the buildings could be used adaptively, but if there was no immediate NPS use, they should be torn down, as none of them were architecturally or historically distinctive. Memo from Supervisory Historian Ross Holland to Director, Denver Service Center, via Manager, Historic Preservation Team, Denver Service Center, dated 5/29/73. Also note that the Pierce Point School was later demolished. 130 Anna Cox Toogood, June 1980. A Civil History of Golden Gate National Recreation Area and Point Reyes National Seashore, Historic Resource Study, Volume 2. Published by Historic Preservation Branch, Pacific Northwest/Western Team, Denver Service Center, National Park Service; at 229. 131 Ibid. at 234-39. The Olema Valley district was actually determined eligible for listing in 1979 but that determination was “lost” by park staff in the interim. 132 In contrast, a number of other interpretive displays in the park—regarding the tule elk, marine wildlife, and the RCA/MCI and AT&T radio operations—do have paved pull-outs and “exhibit ahead” signs. 178 Prospectus” document mentions a possible orientation kiosk for the northern district of the park, including the pastoral zone, being added off of Sir Francis Drake Blvd., just before the entrance to the park lands, but it was never implemented.133 Similarly, there is a complete absence of interpretation of the GGNRA ranches, either in the visitor centers or out on the landscape.

Figure 4.23: Pastoral zone sign.

Figure 4.24: Location of the pastoral zone sign along the road to Drake’s Beach; the sign is just in front of the bush on the left-hand side of the photo.

133 Interview with John Del’Osso, PRNS Chief of Interpretation, 3/28/00. 179

There is also no official mention of other agricultural uses of the land, such as production of artichokes and other vegetables in the 1930s and ‘40s, numerous hunting lodges, a commercial flower-growing enterprise, and so on. This lack of interpretation contributes to the invisibility of the working landscape, and may cause visitors to question the presence of agricultural operations within a National Seashore. In 1989, in response to many visitor inquiries over the presence of ranches inside the park, the Superintendent had official “historic ranch” signs posted by some of the old Shafter ranches in the park. These brown and white signs give each ranch’s alphabet designation (not the current family name) and the year it was first established, but provide no other information. Ranches that are still operating dairies have the same signs as ranches that have switched over to beef, or that are only grazed and have no remaining ranch buildings at all.134

Figure 4.25: Official sign at the former F Ranch site.

134 For example, the F ranch site has a sign, even though the Gallaghers ended their operation there in 1966, and the buildings were torn down by the NPS in the same year. 180 In addition, there is one still-operating ranch, Rogers, that does not have a sign; it was divided out from M Ranch in the 1940s, and so was never part of the historic Shafter system, and thus apparently was not thought to be “historic” enough to warrant a sign.135 There are also a number of original Shafter ranches that do not have signs, including the former N Ranch site, which, like F Ranch, has no buildings left and is leased for grazing. Neither the W Ranch at Bear Valley, where old ranch buildings are now used adaptively as the Administration Headquarters, nor the former Laguna (T) Ranch, now used as an Environmental Education Center, have signs. There is no indication at any of the four hike-in campgrounds that they were once dairies.136 In addition, none of the GGNRA ranches were given signs. Because of these discrepancies in how they are allotted, the official signs tell an incomplete story, emphasizing some ranches as “historic” over others, and making no distinction between ranches that have disappeared, those that have been re-used, and those that remain a living, working part of the landscape. It is important to note that in its official references to the ranches, the NPS primarily uses the old Shafter alphabet names, rather than current family names. This emphasizes the families’ status as tenants, and de-personalizes the ranch operations, linking them less to the current occupants than to the 1850s lawyers’ system. In contrast, Shafter ranches outside of the pastoral zone, if they are referred to as ranches at all, retain their non-alphabet names (i.e. Bear Valley vs. W, Laguna vs. T, etc.). The two hike-in campgrounds that were alphabet ranches were given new names, Coast Camp (U) and Sky Camp (Z). Having place-based rather than family names, these sites become less and less linked to their past history as ranches, so that many people now do not know that they once were dairies. Finally, in the case of the Wilkins Ranch, administrative staff

135 I asked the Chief of Interpretation why the Rogers Ranch did not have a sign, and he responded that he thought it did have one, that perhaps it had fallen down or been vandalized (interview, 3/28/00). However, I cannot recall ever seeing a sign there, nor has one been put back in place since I raised the issue. 136 When asked why none of the former ranch sites that are now walk-in campgrounds have signs, the Chief of Interpretation referred to restrictions on interpretive signage in wilderness areas (interview, 3/28/00). However, there are interpretive signs about the tule elk on Tomales Point, which is also designated wilderness. Hence, it is not clear why the former S, T, U, V, W, Y, and Z ranch sites do not have signs, since they were part of the historic Shafter system. 181 currently use the old family name, yet most locals refer to the ranch by its 1970s-era name, Rancho Baulines.137 All of these naming patterns result in a decreased connection of existing ranches to their current occupants, and an erasing of the agricultural history at former ranch sites. According to the PRNS Chief of Interpretation, many of the ranchers do not want to be “part of the exhibit” themselves, in the sense of having their ranches marked on the Seashore’s official map. Still, the NPS provides no interpretive material on how long the various families have been there, where the milk goes, or why the ranches are still an important part of the seashore. Plans to develop a “living farm” exhibit have been discussed many times by NPS staff, but never have been implemented. This lack of interpretative attention contributes to the ranches, when they are recognized at all, being

seen as static things of the past, rather than living and working in the present.138

Summary of Theme Two

At Point Reyes, NPS management has gradually contributed to the active, working landscape becoming increasingly arrested in character and appearance. The number of agricultural operations has dwindled to a handful, and those that remain exist within a NPS framework that tends to posit them as part of history, things of the past.

Recent efforts to improve sensitivity to and management of the peninsula’s cultural resources may improve matters, but it is not clear whether these changes will be able to turn back the institutional momentum toward creating an unchanging, museum-like landscape.

137 Although in several older files, such as the Squad Meeting minutes from 1973-76, PRNS staff routinely used the name Rancho Baulines. Their recent switch to the older name may be related to the recent controversy regarding evicting the long-term tenant and converting the ranch to an Environmental Education Center. 138 Guideline #6 for current 1980 GMP Revision originally addressed preserving the “ranching history,” not the ranches. After public comment, PRNS planners have changed it to read, “The integrity of cultural resources, including the cultural landscape and active ranches, within the park should be preserved.” Still awkward wording, seems to imply that active ranches are not part of the cultural landscape. 182

183 V. Theme Three: Cultural to Natural

Finally, this research finds a movement in management and interpretation from focusing on cultural resources and their meanings to increasingly emphasizing natural aspects of the landscape. This stems from both a traditional bias within the NPS toward monumental natural scenery, and a recent rise in concern and staff expertise in ecological sciences. The general understanding of nature in the agency is as something exclusive and separate from culture, set apart as a scenic view. This belief is exemplified in the 1964 Wilderness Act, which describes wilderness as land that “generally appears to have been affected primarily by the forces of nature, with the imprint of man’s work substantially unnoticeable.”139 The NPS have institutionalized this understanding of nature into their management practices and policies, and thus shift their lands toward a more natural appearance, erasing the human history from both the physical landscape and the public’s perception of it. As hypothesized, NPS management of Point Reyes has shifted gradually toward prioritizing the natural elements over the cultural. This change can be seen in a number of variables. There has been a substantial decrease in the number of buildings and other structures remaining in the park landscape since it was established. Despite the Seashore’s specific creation as a recreation area, little development for public use has taken place, and recreation access has been limited in favor of protecting the natural landscape. Resource management policies and practices have similarly prioritized natural resources, including measures to protect wildlife habitat, the establishment of a tule elk range on Tomales Point, and designation of an extensive wilderness area within the former ranch lands. Proportions of NPS staff and budget have favored natural resource management over historic or cultural. Finally, NPS interpretation and visitor information about Point Reyes greatly emphasizes the natural resources found in the

139 Public Law 88-577, Section 2(c)(I), emphasis added. 184 park, while giving little attention to the cultural aspects of the landscape. This is exemplified in the official NPS map, free to all visitors, which greatly shapes their expectations of what they will see within the Seashore.

A. Elimination of Structures

One of the most immediately visible changes in the Point Reyes landscape since becoming a National Seashore has been the sizable reduction in the number of buildings within its boundaries. The NPS overall has a distinct tendency to demolish vacant buildings if they do not have an immediate use. As properties at Point Reyes were bought by the NPS where the previous owners did not retain a reservation of right, most structures were quickly torn down, or burned for fire training, reducing the visible remains of historical uses of the land.140 Precise records were not kept of how many structures were demolished or when, but at least 170 buildings had been removed from PRNS-administered lands by 1995.141 This contributes to an overall move toward a more “natural” appearance to the landscape, and erasing the human history. One example of this process is the old Gallagher (F) Ranch site. Historically this ranch, probably the oldest ranch site on the Point, was a center of commerce for the residents of the peninsula; it was actually marked on California maps as a town until the

1940s. It supported the post office until 1920, and the site of the schooner landing for shipping products to San Francisco was located just below on the estero. The ranch buildings themselves, abandoned in the late 1940s, have been described as “some of the most significant on the coast.”142 Yet after the NPS purchased the property in 1966, all

140 The sites would then be cleaned up of debris and reseeded, so as to appear more “natural.” 141 This estimate was calculated from Livingston (1993) and (1995), as well as examination of site photos from land appraisals, PRNS files. This estimate does not include structures such as fences, corrals, gates, or roads. As of April 2000, the park listed 218 remaining historic structures, excluding NPS-constructed buildings but including gates, corrals, fences, historic roads, and all the buildings at Hamlet. By this estimate, it appears that roughly half of the built landscape has been removed. 142 Livingston (1993), at 179. 185 of the then-deteriorating buildings were demolished. The site, now marked by an aging cypress windbreak and remaining corrals, is still culturally important to the local ranchers, serving as a picnic site for gatherings and celebrations.

Figure 4.26: Picnic table at F Ranch, with corral in background.

Figure 4.27: Picnic table with vacant site behind it, and aging windbreak of cypress trees.

186 Similarly deteriorated ranch buildings were removed at a number of other ranch sites throughout the Seashore, often leaving no obvious trace of previous settlement and use. All of the current hike-in campgrounds in the park are former ranch sites, yet other than the occasional remaining eucalyptus or cypress tree, there is no indication at any of these sites of their historic use. Sometimes removal of even dilapidated buildings caused controversy; the Lower Pierce Ranch is one such case. The buildings had stood empty for a few years prior to NPS purchase, and a wind storm in 1972 caused some damage. Both the Upper and Lower Ranches were included within a possible unit of the proposed wilderness area in 1974, and the proposal suggested all the buildings would need to be removed if they fell within the designated wilderness area.143 Before the proposal was finalized, NPS staff demolished the structures at the Lower Ranch in 1975, which raised both local and national concerns that a similar fate would befall the Upper Ranch as well.144

143 Final Environmental Statement, Proposed Wilderness, Point Reyes National Seashore, signed 4/23/74, at 52. 144 Letter to Representative Burton from C. Malcolm Watkins, Senior Curator of Cultural History at the Smithsonian, dated 3/10/76; Box H3012 in PRNS Archive, “History, Pierce Point Ranch.” Watkins wrote, “A lower Pierce Point ranch, nearly as old [as the Upper Ranch], was abandoned when the National Park Service acquired it. It rapidly deteriorated from vandalism and weather until National Seashore Management, in seeming haste, had it demolished last December. I fear that a similar fate may befall the upper ranch, hastened, perhaps, by a narrow interpretation of ‘recreational’ use as applied to the Seashore’s mission. The immensely popular recreation potential of historic structures seems to be entirely overlooked here.” In addition, a memo from PRNS Superintendent to WRO Regional Director, dated 1/15/76, regarding the Randall House, notes that removal of Lower Pierce Point Ranch caused controversy, “even though its removal was supported by most of the organized groups.” File code H3015 -- Historic Structures (Randall House). 187

Figure 4.28: Hikers approaching Lower Pierce Ranch site.

NPS staff did not only remove buildings in dilapidated condition that would have been expensive to rehabilitate; they also routinely removed structures in good condition if there was no immediate use for them. At the Heims (N) Ranch, the first property purchased by the NPS, the buildings were used adaptively for a while as park housing, but when the ranger who lived there moved out, the buildings were destroyed rather than

maintained.145 Approximately sixty structures were burned at the South End/Palomarin Ranch in 1966, where the Christ Church of the Golden Rule had developed a religious community in the 1950s. Most of the houses built as part of the Drake’s Beach Estates subdivision on Limantour Spit were also burned after the land was condemned, even though they were mostly no more than a year or two old.146 Once the Lake Ranch property was condemned in 1971, the old ranch buildings were removed; similar demolitions took place at the New Albion (R) Ranch. This policy has now resulted in a shortage of buildings available within the park for staff housing, administrative uses and other needs.

145 This included the old Point Reyes I.D.E.S Hall (a Portuguese religious and social organization), which was built in the 1890s and served as a meeting hall and polling place for all of Point Reyes for many years. 146 A few were retained for use as staff housing, but none on the Spit itself. 188 In addition, some historic buildings were demolished illegally. At the Lupton Ranch, NPS staff knocked down the main ranch house in 1994 in direct defiance of NPS cultural resource management policies, and subsequently the water tower and milking barn were stripped by wood salvagers and effectively destroyed.147 Similarly at the Truttman Ranch the majority of the ranch buildings (ten in all) were demolished in 1994; one small house had been previously burned for fire training in 1993.148 All of these buildings had been determined eligible by the SHPO for the National Register as part of the Olema Valley Historic District, and their removal was a direct violation of both the Section 106 process of the NHPA and the park’s official cultural resource management policy at the time that no historic buildings would be removed.149 Overall, roughly half of the built environment of Point Reyes and the Olema Valley has disappeared since the Seashore was established. Some of these buildings were in advanced states of disrepair and may have been removed anyway, but many were actually destroyed by the NPS for reasons ranging from no immediate adaptive use to personal disregard for historic preservation laws. As the visual evidence of the landscape’s cultural past decreases, the impression is created of a more and more “natural” landscape.

B. Limited Recreation Access and Development

In the early 1960s, much was made of the point that Point Reyes was being established as a National Seashore, not a National Park, and that its primary purpose was

147 Livingston (1995), at 201. Also note Superintendent Sansing ordered “three rare historic chicken coops and a shed” removed at the R. Giacomini Ranch in 1990; ibid. at 174. 148 Ibid. at 258-260. 149 See General Management Plan, GGNRA/PRNS (1980), at 89. These demolitions occurred just prior to the Superintendent’s retirement, and often are attributed to his particular personality, but they may be representative of a larger disregard for historic preservation regulations. Alanen (2000), at 129 specifically cites national seashores and lakeshores as places where, despite the passage of historic preservation regulations, NPS managers continued to demolish old structures or allow abandoned buildings to deteriorate until they became safety hazards. 189 to provide for public recreation. During the 1961 Senate hearings, sponsoring Congressman Miller stressed this in his testimony—and was later echoed in a statement from the National Parks Association—making the “very important” distinction between “national primeval parks” and Point Reyes, a national seashore close to an urban area.150 Yet despite this initial intention, the park has mostly been managed as if it was a National Park, with protection of natural resources as its primary goal. Very little recreation development has ever been implemented, despite plans for such as late as the 1980 General Management Plan. The overall trend has been one of increasing emphasis on the wild and natural character of the landscape, at the expense of both cultural resources and recreation opportunities. The first Master Plan for Park Development and Use, written in 1963, planned extensive development at Point Reyes for recreation, including a four-lane federal parkway running throughout the peninsula and developments for car camping, boating, etc. (Figure 4.29: map) Because of the slow pace and high expense of land acquisition efforts during the 1960s, however, none of these plans were implemented.151 Even as late as 1980, the General Management Plan projected visitation to PRNS would increase, and recommended a total of six new campgrounds and two new hostels for the peninsula and Olema Valley.152 Yet again, none of these developments have been realized in the

150 U.S. Congress, Senate Hearings (1961), at 70, 168. The NPA’s written statement includes, “Provided we keep in mind that a national seashore is not a national park in its primeval and wilderness sense of the term, this provision for a pastoral area within the park, preserving present uses, is highly desirable. In fact, the combination of dairy country and wild natural shoreland is part of the charm of Point Reyes, and we think the combination ought to be preserved.” 151 They were still included in a 1970 Statement of Management Objectives for the park, calling for development of facilities “to foster recreational pursuits of swimming, boating, bicycling, horseback riding, golf, playgrounds featuring activities for both children and adults, beachcombing, skindiving, whale watching, tide pool exploration, nature education, bird-watching, and photography.” [at 10] PRNS files. 152 Specifically Olema Valley was to have a walk-in campground at Truttman Ranch and hostels at both the northern and southern end of the valley in unspecified “historic structures.” Also a walk-in camp and picnic area at Five Brooks, a hike-in camp on Bolinas Ridge east of Five Brooks, and an environmental education center at Rancho Baulines if demand warranted it. Other unspecified “local ranches” were to continue operations, plus one “working ranch used to interpret historical agricultural use of the valley.” For Point Reyes, the NPS planned expanded interpretive activities and exhibits at Bear Valley and Drakes, plus food service at Bear Valley. Tours and programs at Pierce Ranch and the lifesaving station were added. Planned a hike-in camp at Home Ranch and Muddy Hollow Ranch, and a boat-in camp at Marshall Beach. NPS, General Management Plan, GGNRA/PRNS (1980), at 110-112. 190 twenty years since the plan. Point Reyes today still only has four primitive hike-in camps, one hostel, and three visitor centers. Visitation has remained fairly constant since 1991 at roughly 2.5 million annually.153 The General Management Plan is currently under revision, but two of the seven guidelines to these planning efforts make clear the park’s intent to not encourage additional visitation or development.154 Tourists can find information in three visitor centers, spread throughout the Seashore; these concentrate public use into a few easy-to-manage areas of the park. The Clem Miller Environmental Education Center provides additional programs, and overnight housing can be found at the Point Reyes Hostel. Otherwise there are very few concessions,

153 In 1969 visitation was approximately 1 million with almost no facilities available. 1970 Point Reyes National Seashore Management Objectives, PRNS files. 154 The guidelines are as follows: 1) “Any new development for visitor services should be limited to what is essential to accommodate visitors. The park should not be commercialized in the future.” 2) “While a certain increase in visitation is expected, the park should not develop facilities to encourage additional visitation.” Point Reyes National Seashore Planning Guidelines, February 2000. 191

Figure 4.29: Map of possible recreation developments, 1961 Land Use Survey.

192 and no motels, restaurants, or gift shops.155 There is only limited access for certain types of recreation, such as bicycle riding and dog-walking, despite a number of requests for greater access.156 Access to certain areas is also restricted seasonally for natural resource protections, such as preventing soil erosion on trails in the rainy season, or not allowing dogs on certain beaches during shorebird nesting seasons.

Figure 4.30: Drakes Beach, a popular tourist destination.

A further reduction of access may be on the way, as indicated in a recent interview with PRNS Superintendent Don Neubacher, published in the NPS journal Park

Science. In it, Neubacher discusses the recent colonization of the Point Reyes Beach by elephant seals, and how their presence might soon bring them into conflict with human beach-goers. He said:

155 The only concessions within the park boundary are a café at Drake’s Beach, operated by a local woman from one of the ranching families, Johnson’s Oyster Farm on Drake’s Bay, and the book shop in the Bear Valley Visitor Center, run by the Point Reyes National Seashore Association. 156 Specifically, at a number of recent GMP scoping meetings citizens have requested that the Rift Zone Trail that parallels Highway 1 between Bear Valley and Five Brooks be opened to bicycles, to allow bikers to get off the dangerously narrow highway. Note that bicycles are not allowed in designated wilderness areas. PRNS Scoping Meetings, 10/9/99 and 2/29/00. This seems to be another example of the NPS listening only to the public input that it actually wants to hear, and not responding to that it doesn’t agree with. 193 It takes time to grow public acceptance that elephant seals deserve to have this beach. Dr. Sarah Allen, the park’s Science Advisor, has done a phenomenal job of collecting information on the elephant seal populations, monitoring them, and observing their population dynamics. We can share this information with the public and build a constituency for the seals over time, until people are willing to give up a beach space.157 It seems particularly ironic that at a National Seashore, originally established in order to provide public access to beaches, the public is now expected to give up those same beaches to make way for the natural resources that the NPS prefers. Through interpretation and management, the NPS shapes public opinion to coincide with its own, and tends to discount voices that do not agree as insufficiently informed.

C. Priorities In Resource Management: Wilderness

The cultural imprints on the Point Reyes landscape have been relatively invisible to NPS planners and managers, focusing instead on the natural character of the landscape. The first NPS recreation survey of the area done in 1935 mentions the presence of “ranch holdings” on the peninsula but not specifically the dairy industry as a commercial development.158 Despite previous military installations, mercury mines, and other disruptive uses on the landscape, NPS Director Wirth opened his testimony at House hearings in 1960 with reference to how the area had been “left so unaltered by the hand of man.”159 The following year the sponsoring Congressmen Engle and Miller commented that little had changed at Point Reyes since Sir Francis Drake allegedly landed there in 1579.160 From the beginning the management emphasis has been on the

157 “A Conversation with Point Reyes Superintendent Don Neubacher,” by Jeff Selleck, Fall/Winter 2000. Park Science 20(2):19-22. 158 Quoted in Brian McCarthy’s testimony, U.S. Congress, Senate Hearings (1960), at 79-80. 159 U.S. Congress, Senate Hearings (1960), at 6. 160 U.S. Congress, Senate Hearings (1961) at 51. 194 supposed pristine quality of the natural resources, overlooking the 150 years of extensive modifications of the landscape for ranching. Unlike the expensive vacation homes at Cape Cod, which the NPS was forced to work around when planning the National Seashore there, the Point Reyes cultural landscape was all but non-existent to early establishment and management considerations. In a continuation of this trend, historical uses of the Point Reyes landscape were completely ignored as the NPS began to study possible wilderness designations in the Seashore. Interestingly, this was driven much more by public demand than the NPS itself; in 1972 PRNS staff recommended the designation of 10,600 acres as wilderness, increased from their original proposal of 5,150 acres after public comment emphasized a larger wilderness area.161 In the environmental impact statement for the proposal, there was no mention of the old ranch sites within the proposed wilderness area except as their current status as hike-in camps. The unpaved ranch roads that made up the trail system were cited as “the only visible remnants of man’s past activities in the area”—despite the presence of 50 miles of fence lines, some World War II-era bunkers, several old borrow pits, and a few old ranch dumps which were “being removed or obliterated.”162 However, the proposal described the remaining operating ranches outside the wilderness zone with emphasis on the environmental damage they caused, with references to “scars” from development and use.163 Characterizing the non-wilderness area ranches as destructive to the natural environment forms a stark contrast to the invisibility of the ranches when the Seashore itself was actually proposed, when the peninsula was described as virtually untouched and pristine.164

161 PRNS Wilderness Recommendation, August 1972. The area proposed was along the Inverness Ridge and south, between the Bear Valley area and the coast. Note that this is an example of the NPS listening to the public comment/input that it wants to hear, in contrast to current public comment re: protecting cultural resources. 162 Final Environmental Statement for Proposed PRNS Wilderness, April 1974, at 25. 163 Final Environmental Statement for Proposed PRNS Wilderness, April 1974, at 14-15. 164 Interestingly, in her oral history interview, Katy Miller Johnson commented that “the Park Service had adopted a policy the general gist of which was—if you’re stuck with a policy you don’t like, enforce it to such a degree that nobody else will like it either,” i.e. that the NPS took “an incredibly strict construction of what it [wilderness] means.” Lage and Duddleston (1993), at 94. 195 Input from the public and interested non-profit groups eventually pushed the NPS to recommend an even larger acreage, adding 14,880 acres to the original proposal, bringing the total to 25,480 acres.165 In the bills proposed to Congress, wilderness designation was described as the highest value for public use, education and enjoyment of Point Reyes, and that these should not be “lost or degraded by management policies designed for other, less natural areas of our National Park System.”166 Point Reyes was contrasted to the GGNRA, primarily devoted to recreation uses, as being more wild and natural, thus deserving of the wilderness designation. One Senator questioned the appropriateness of calling areas with so many man-made encumbrances and non- conforming uses “wilderness,” but his concerns were not shared by the other

Representatives, the NPS, or the public.167 In 1976 Congress passed a wilderness designation for 25,370 acres, with “potential wilderness” additions of 8003 acres.168 It also amended PRNS legislation to add that the Secretary must administer the entire park “without impairment of its natural values, in a manner that provides for such recreational, educational, historic preservation, interpretation, and scientific research opportunities that are consistent with, based upon, and supportive of the maximum protection, restoration, and preservation of the natural environment within the area.” In mentioning the passage of the bills to his staff, the

165 This was enlarged even further in one of the final bills proposed to Congress (S. 2472, proposed by Senators Tunney and Cranston) to 38,700 acres, primarily due to the inclusion of a quarter-mile trip of offshore tidelands. The NPS did not believe it could include the submerged tidelands in its proposal because the State of California owned the mineral rights. 166 U.S. Congress, Senate Hearings (1976), at 270, from Senator Tunney’s written statement; emphasis added. 167 U.S. Congress, Senate Hearings (1976), various testimony and questions from Senator Hansen (WY). He sums up his concern by saying, “Doesn’t it seem a little strange that we have a wilderness and we’ve got a 2-mile long road going I would say two-thirds of the way across it to get to a camp where facilities are—I don’t ask you this; this is a rhetorical question. You may respond if you like. But it just seems a little bit phony to me that we’re saying this is wilderness… We’re not going to defile the wilderness concept more by pretending like the road doesn’t exist or the need doesn’t exist for the camp, so we have a corridor going down to it. Now, that seems to me to be verging pretty well on what to me is an untenable position to take.” At 311. Note that this echoes the debate over the Eastern Wilderness Bill of 1975. 168 Public Law 94-544. In the NPS, areas with current incompatible uses can be given a “potential” wilderness designation, meaning that if the non-conforming uses are eliminated, the NPS can then administratively add those acres to the designated wilderness area. 196 Superintendent noted, “The legislation also emphasizes that the natural values of Point Reyes should be of primary interest and changes the legislative history accordingly. This means that Point Reyes should be looked at as a Natural Area rather than a Recreation Area.”169 This despite the fact that language that would have removed the park from the National Park System’s “recreation area” category and required that it be managed as a “natural area” was specifically deleted from the original proposed legislation.170 The 1980 General Management Plan continued to treat PRNS as the “wilderness unit” and GGNRA as the “recreation unit” of the Bay Area parklands, even though both were originally established as recreation areas. Recently the areas listed as “potential” wilderness have received full wilderness status, based on the removal of utility lines, so that the wilderness area now encompasses 33, 373 acres.171 However, this wilderness area is not contiguous; it is in pieces, has several roads and access corridors going through it, and was historically ranched for over one hundred years.172 (Figure 4.31: PRNS Map) This management emphasis has the effect of erasing all of the previous human use of the wilderness area, replacing it with an ahistorical, “natural” landscape.

169 Squad Meeting Minutes, 10/4/76, Superintendent’s item #5; file folder A4031, PRNS files. 170 Report to Accompany H.R. 8002, “Designating certain lands in the Point Reyes National Seashore, California, as wilderness, designating Point Reyes National Seashore as a natural area of the National Park System, and for other purposes,” U.S. Congress, House Report no. 94-1680 (1976), at 3-4. 171 The electrical lines are still there, but have been moved under ground. Note that this differentiation is mostly based on how the area looks, not anything to do with the actual ecosystem functioning. For a discussion of the centrality of landscape appearance to wilderness designation, see Mark Woods, “Federal Wilderness Preservation in the United States: The Preservation of Wilderness?” in The Great New Wilderness Debate, J. Baird Callicott and Michael P. Nelson, eds. (1998). 172 The bulk of the wilderness is in the southern section of the Seashore, but it is bisected by the Limantour road, and several access corridors that have been “cherry-stemmed” out of the designated wilderness cut extensively across it. Many buildings and paved roads were only removed a few years prior to wilderness designation. 197

Figure 4.31: PRNS map, the darker sections are the wilderness area. Note the roads “cherry-stemmed” out of the designated wilderness.

198 D. Priorities in Resource Management: Flora and Fauna

While the natural landscape at Point Reyes has consistently been emphasized by the NPS, active natural resource management and science is actually a relatively recent development. Both staff and funding for the natural resources division at PRNS have expanded dramatically since 1995. Between 1985-1997, most division budgets increased by roughly 20-35%; however, the natural resource management budget increased by 72%.173 As of July 2000, the division officially had nine staff members; however, staff at the park working on all natural resource-related issues totaled twenty-seven.174 The natural resources division is now at the forefront of PRNS management; one of the current General Management Plan revision guidelines: “The protection of scenic and natural resources and ecological systems should be foremost in the short-term and long-

term management of the park.”175 The first big wildlife issue for the Seashore began in 1971, when a state-wide interagency task force identified Tomales Point as suitable habitat for rare tule elk (Cervus elaphus nannodes) to be transplanted from a badly overcrowded remnant population in the Central Valley.176 A three-mile-long, ten-foot-tall fence enclosing 2,600 acres was quietly built to separate the elk from nearby dairy ranches.177 It was

173 In contrast, there was little or no cultural resource management budget until the last two years. It still remains a small fraction of the size of the other divisions. Budget data, PRNS files. 174 Nine staff in natural resources plus one on the coho salmon project, one in range management, six in fire ecology and management, two in GIS, one in hydrology, two in “science” and five USGS/BRD people adds up to 27 total. This in contrast to three staff employed under the cultural resources division, two of which had just been hired. From PRNS staff phone list, July 2000. 175 Point Reyes National Seashore Planning Guidelines, February 2000. 176 Point Reyes was part of the tule elk’s natural habitat range until the 1850s, when they were hunted nearly to extinction across the state. Twenty-three potential sites were identified around California, and Pierce Ranch was one of four selected to actually receive the animals. Three places at Point Reyes were initially identified as potential elk sites, “none of which included Tomales Point. Later reexamination of conditions at Point Reyes, focused by the suggestions of [Superintendent] John Sansing, led to identification of Tomales Point as the most suitable site for reestablishment of the elk.” Memo from Richard Myshak, Acting Assistant Secretary for Wish and Wildlife and Parks, Dept. of Interior, to Albert Bianchi [Mervyn McDonald’s lawyer], April 7, 1978. 177 Fence needed due to concern about transmission of Johne's disease from the elk to the cattle, also to prevent grazing competition. 199 very expensive—the materials alone cost $49,000—yet it went up “with little public discussion and analysis of impact.”178 An initial herd of ten individuals was established in 1978; fifteen more were added later.179 There are no natural predators to keep the population in check, and visitors can often see the elk from the roadside; in some ways, the fenced-in herd is not entirely different than a zoo exhibit.

Figure 4.32: Elk fence; note it is much taller than the regular cattle fence in the right foreground.

While the tule elk program has been a success in terms of reestablishing the species at Point Reyes, it now requires extensive management to maintain the herd. In the years since then the elk have flourished, so much so that Tomales Point is no longer large enough to support them all.180 An experimental program of immuno-contraception

178 See article from unknown magazine, undated: “No Room For Cows on Point Reyes,” by Philip L. Fradkin, PRNS file box N1428, Vol. IV – “Science -- Mammals and Ungulates -- Tule Elk,” at 102. 179 At first they experienced high mortality; of the initial herd of 10, 5 died within a few years. “Evicted rancher staying close,” by Michael Gray, Point Reyes Light, May 29, 1980. 180 The maximum population size estimated for to be healthy for the Point is 350. In 1996 the elk herd had increased from 270 individuals to 380 in only a year’s time; the current herd size is larger than 500. “Limantour may get some elk,” by David Rolland, Point Reyes Light, 11/7/96; “Helicopter gives elk rides from Pierce Point,” by Marian Schinske, Point Reyes Light, 12/3/98; and PRNS public information sheet on elk. 200 was begun in 1997, and in 1998 a small group of roughly thirty individuals was moved by helicopter to the Limantour Beach area as a second experimental population.181 This kind of extensive human involvement and manipulation of the animals is far from “natural,” yet the elk herd is often framed by NPS literature as “an important step in the ecological restoration in the park.”182

Figure 4.33: Two bull elk in rutting season on Tomales Point.

The Seashore has extensive science and management programs for other kinds of wildlife, including elephant seals, snowy plovers, coho salmon and steelhead. In addition, the peninsula’s vegetation is the subject of much study, identifying and mapping plant communities, managing for endangered species, and so on. One major management concern is the control of non-native plant species such as iceplant, broom

181 Note that several Point Reyes Light articles state that “The park's general management plan calls for allowing the elk to roam free throughout the 70,000-acre park after the leases for the 11 dairy ranches remaining on Point Reyes are voluntarily ended” (“Limantour may get some elk,” by David Rolland, Point Reyes Light 11/7/96). Yet I can’t find any mention of this in the General Management Plan itself; the only mention of the elk at all is at 96: “Restoration of historic natural conditions (such as reestablishment of Tule elk) will continue to be implemented when such actions will not seriously diminish scenic and recreational values.” Apparently some of the transplanted elk in the Limantour area have swum across the estero and have been seen on the Nunes (A) and Mendoza (B) Ranches. Interview, Thom Thompson, 2/05/01. 182 PRNS website, http://www.nps.gov/pore/resources/natural/elk.htm, 2/13/01. 201 and yellow star thistle; prescribed burning has traditionally been the most frequently used method of control.183 Grazing may be a good management tool for controlling invasive exotics, but this is only beginning to be realized at the Seashore, and upper-level management is apparently still reluctant to accept its use as such.184 In some instances within the Seashore, exotic species have cultural meaning or significance. A prominent example is a mile-long line of eucalyptus trees between the Lunny (G) and Grossi/Evans (H) Ranches, marking the old boundary between the Howard and Shafter holdings. When it was first planted in the 1870s, the line was a colonnade of trees, but since then it has expanded outward. This now presents a management dilemma, as the trees are an exotic species and a fire hazard, yet they also constitute a major component of the historic cultural landscape. The reverse problem exists for many lone eucalyptus or cypress trees that mark former ranches, building sites, or cemetery plots; in many cases they are so old the trees are beginning to die, yet there are no NPS plans to replace what are often the only remaining markers of these cultural sites.

183 Note that the entire NPS has suspended controlled burns after the Bandelier fire of 2000, pending overhaul of fire management protocols etc. 184 Vegetation Resources Management presentation by PRNS Plant Ecologist Barbara Moritsch, 10/26/99. 202 Figure 4.34: Eucalyptus line, reaching from Abbot’s Lagoon to the main road. The Grossi/Evans Ranch (H) is in the background.

All of these management dilemmas raise the question, what is the “natural” landscape of Point Reyes, after such a long history of human occupation and use? The native grasses disappeared centuries ago. Before the cattle were brought in, it is believed that large ungulates like the tule elk kept the peninsula grasslands fairly open and free of brush, yet current day natural resource managers tend to see ranches as “incompatible use,” and can get frustrated with having to work around them.185 The PRNS staff are not aiming their management toward some idealized pre-Columbian ecosystem; one staff member described their approach as, “We just look at what is there today, what’s happened historically, and ask, what do we want tomorrow and how can we achieve that?” Yet the heavy emphasis on managing for natural resources often overshadows the cultural landscape in the Seashore, reshaping it into an increasingly nature-dominated place.

Figure 4.35: Fence line between grazed and ungrazed lands.

185 Vegetation Resources Management presentation by PRNS Plant Ecologist Barbara Moritsch, 10/26/99. 203

204 E. Interpretation: Official Representations of the Seashore to the Public

Interpretation plays a key role in defining the Seashore to its visitors, by focusing attention on certain aspects of the area’s history and resources. Current interpretative materials at PRNS call attention primarily to natural resources. Exhibits at the man visitor center at Bear Valley are overwhelmingly predominated by presentations on Point Reyes geology, ecology, and wildlife. All human history is relegated to one corner of the exhibit area, with panels on the Coast Miwok, early European exploration of the coast, and the ranching history. There is no mention of other agricultural uses of the land, or the old hunting lodges that used to be scattered across the peninsula; these cultural uses of the land have been left out of official PRNS history entirely. The center at Drake’s Beach has exhibits only on marine ecology and Sir Francis Drake; the Lighthouse visitor center focuses strictly on the Light’s own history. In addition to visitor center exhibits, roadside pullout interpretive signs provide lots of information about the natural landscape, comparatively little about cultural or historic landscapes.

Figure 4.36: Interpretive sign at Drake’s Estero.

205 A key representation of the park to the public is the official park map, free to visitors and containing information about what to do, trails, the park’s history, rules of use, etc. The way this information is presented and portrayed—particularly by what is included and what is left out—can significantly shape perceptions of the area.186 The contents of the map brochure have evolved considerably over the history of the park, tending to de-emphasize the cultural and recreational aspects while highlighting the natural resources in the park. The first version of the map brochure was produced locally by park staff in 1962. The map itself was fairly simple, without much detail, and noted that while the public use area would eventually be acquired, there would likely be no recreation facilities operated by the NPS in 1963. The text also clearly states that the pastoral zone will remain in private ownership. Both photos included in the brochure are of beaches, emphasizing that the new park is a National Seashore intended for public access to shoreline and recreation. Under the heading “Point Reyes Tomorrow,” the text reads: “Long-range plans for the National Seashore provide for a judicious balance between three governing factors—development for public use, preservation of natural values, and maintenance of the pastoral zone. Too great an emphasis on any one of these factors would prejudice the others.”187 This statement was repeated in a 1966 version of the map, along with an enlarged section on the history of the peninsula, including nineteenth-century settlement

and development of the ranching industry: “…eventually it became known for its fine dairy products, as it is today.”188 These first versions of the map clearly reflect early concerns for the different types of resources and uses of the park. A memo in 1967 from the Publications Officer in the Western Regional Office to the Point Reyes Superintendent indicates that they would be changing from the locally-

186 There is an extensive literature on maps and their influence on perception; see, for starters, John Pickles, “Texts, Hermeneutics and Propaganda Maps,” and J. B. Harley, “Deconstructing the Map,” both in Writing Worlds: Discourse, Text & Metaphor in the Representation of Landscape, Trevor J. Barnes and James S. Duncan, eds. (1992). 187 1962 Point Reyes National Seashore Map, PRNS files. 188 Note that this nicely ties the historic development into the current-day ranches. 206 produced brochure to a standardized-format “mini-folder,” due to the increasing demand and cheaper cost of the mini-folders.189 Point Reyes Naturalist Harry Wills is mentioned as writing the text for the new map, as the old text is “outdated.” The first mini-folder was printed in 1968, with near-identical printings in 1969 and 1970. The maps in these still made no distinction between the public and ranching areas in the park. The text includes sections on “what to do and see,” “weather and seasons,” “natural history,” and “history.” However, the latter is only three sentences long, and no longer mentions the dairy industry directly. The statement regarding the balancing of natural, cultural and recreation values is no longer included. The mini-folders were reprinted in 1973 and 1975 with some changes to the map and text, including a distinctly colored and identified “pastoral zone,” along with a request that visitors respect private property rights. None of the individual ranches are marked, not even Pierce Ranch; this may be in accordance with the ranchers’ wishes not to be included on the map. In the text, the historical section is gone, with some of the historical information included in an introductory section, followed by individual sections on “natural history,” “weather and seasons,” and “what to do and see.” The only photograph at this point is of a flock of California murres. In comparison with the earlier brochures, these versions have an increasing emphasis on the natural resources in the park, and very little about the history or cultural resources of the area. By 1978, the map format had changed again, this time to the nationally-produced “uni-grid” format which is found in all NPS-managed areas. The uni-grid maps use slick glossy paper and colors, rather than a more simple black-and-white production. The first iteration of the PRNS uni-grid had the park lands all the same color, but its second printing in 1980 made a distinction between the wilderness/potential wilderness area and the rest of the park. This has been the case ever since. Interestingly, the colors used have

189 Memo 1/20/67 from Publications Officer, WRO to PRNS Superintendent, to confirm recent phone conversation with Naturalist Harry Wills. 207 changed; first the park was a pale green with wilderness marked in a darker green, state parks yellow, GGNRA lands a yellowish-green, and privately-held land beige.190 In 1993 the wilderness had changed to pale green and the pastoral zone to beige, very similar to the beige used for private lands. The current version of the map, printed in 1998, shows the wilderness areas in dark green, pastoral lands as medium brown, and private property much paler cream color, with state parks as a paler shade of green. Few other parks make such a strong distinction between wilderness and non-wilderness areas of the park.191 In particular, the color green is the traditional color for national parks on nearly all U.S. maps; the use of brown to indicate pastoral lands sets them off as something different, suggesting they are perhaps less park-like than the green areas. The cultural landscape is downplayed in the brochure in other ways. The photographs illustrating the map and text have never included an image of a ranch or of cattle, but instead tend to feature elk, marine wildlife, the Lighthouse, wildflowers, etc. Although the map included increasing detail of locations in and around the park, none of the ranches were ever marked until 1993, when “Historic Pierce Point Ranch” was finally added. The pastoral zone was first identified in 1973, but that indicator disappeared in the 1978-85 uni-grids. In 1993 it reappeared as a designation of “pastoral lands” running vertically near the D, E and F Ranch sites, making it somewhat hard to read on an otherwise mostly-horizontal map. The text’s discussion of the ranches has also shifted; the first uni-grids included a paragraph in the “Man At Point Reyes” section that read as follows: During Mexican rule, three ‘Lords of Point Reyes’—James Berry, Rafael Garcia, and Antonio Osio—held the entire peninsula through land grants, but not for long.

190 The 1988 printing of the map has similar colors but with a more grayish tint and topographic shading. 191 I actually have yet to find a single one that makes such a prominent distinction between either wilderness and non-wilderness parts of the park, or any other kind of land classification. Particularly I have yet to find another uni-grid that uses any color other than green to indicate park land (and if they do make a distinction of wilderness vs. non-wilderness park land, it is always with different shades of green). The sampling of uni-grids analyzed includes: Arches, Bryce Canyon, Cape Hatteras, Chaco Canyon, Colorado NM, Death Valley, Dinosaur, Ebey’s Landing, Golden Gate, Great Smoky Mountains, Muir Woods, Rocky Mountain, Shenandoah, and Yosemite. 208 The United States’ conquest of California raised the curtain on the land speculators waiting in the wings. The eventual result was the breakup of the great domains into a number of cattle ranches. Beef and dairy cattle have roamed the brushy flatlands of Point Reyes ever since. Herds still graze in its pastoral zone, just as Congress intended when it passed legislation authorizing a National Seashore on September 13, 1962. (emphasis added) However, in the 1993 and 1998 printings, the final sentence of that paragraph has been left out, decreasing the validation that mention of Congressional intent gave the ranches previously. These subtle shifts in the map’s appearance and content may seem small, but they can add up to a significant impression on visitors. Nothing in this official brochure explains why the ranches are still operating in the park, yet a great deal of information about the natural environment and wildlife is given, representing a similar shift in policy emphasis. The cultural information that is included emphasizes the ancient past, rather than the current-day users. Other than a request that visitors respect the privacy of ranch residents, there is no other mention of this significant population within the park. These details inform visitors’ expectations, leading them to better understanding of their natural surroundings but not of the cultural uses and meanings of the land. They also provide a glimpse into which aspects of the park the staff have chosen to emphasize, or believe is most important for visitors to know.

VI. New Attention to the Cultural Landscape

There is some movement afoot in PRNS management toward greater recognition of the cultural landscape; in recent years a small cultural resource staff has been hired; including a landscape historian, an archivist, and a historic preservation carpentry team.

209 These managers are eager to work in concert with the natural resources staff, and have put forward some innovative ideas for re-emphasizing the importance of the cultural landscape. Park staff are currently developing a cultural landscape inventory at the Seashore, preparing to submit a formal nomination of the area to be listed on the National Register as a rural historic landscape. This effort represents a marked change from earlier management at the park, which tended to minimize the historic and cultural qualities of the landscape. It is not yet clear, however, whether this document will help instill a stronger sense of the importance of maintaining an actively working landscape at the park. The first attention given to the cultural landscape came in 1991, as part of a draft Historic Resource Study. At a meeting at the Seashore in June of that year, the director of the NPS’s fledgling national cultural landscape program said that Point Reyes was considered “the most significant cultural landscape in the System,” warranting greater attention.192 In 1995 the entire peninsula was found eligible to the National Register by the California SHPO as a rural historic district under three of the four possible criteria.193 The period of significance was set to match the Shafter era of ranching, 1857-1939.194 In the determination of eligibility, the SHPO wrote, Most of the contributing resources, despite minor alterations, convey to the visitor a strong sense of the feeling, setting and appearance of the

Point Reyes area during the historical period of significance. Even contributing structures that were constructed between 1939 and 1945 [i.e. those meeting the 50-year rule] were built with the idea of continuing the architectural legacy of their predecessors. This reflects a continuity of

192 Dewey Livingston’s notes from meeting in June, Bob Page speaking: “[Chief of NPS Cultural Resource Management Randy] Biallas considers Point Reyes to be most significant cultural landscape in System.” 193 Specifically is eligible under criteria A, C and D. PRNS files. 194 1939 is the year when the last Shafter-estate-owned ranch was sold. 210 design and purpose that has kept the historical idea of the Point Reyes dairy industry alive in the mind of the visitor.195 The period of significance has since been redefined as 1857-1962, based on the Shafter ranch system, the associated families, and continuity of use. It still does not include any of the NPS-managed years, though. Staff feel NPS management changed things significantly enough for the ranches that the years since 1962 should not be included.196 This restricts what is considered important history and, even more significantly, does not acknowledge the substantial effect its management has had on the landscape; this dissertation suggests that this is a serious oversight. While it is not yet definite, the boundary of the nominated historic district is likely to change as well, no longer including the entire peninsula but only the “pastoral zone” portion of it. This is seen as a necessity to get the nomination approved; if too much of the “parent landscape” is not contributing to its overall historic integrity (i.e. the wilderness area), the entire cultural landscape designation could be rejected.197 Here the criteria are thus forcing a definition of the cultural landscape as what is left of it today, rather than the complete history of the area. Sections of the park outside the district boundary may not be recognized as having any cultural or historic value at all, continuing the erasure of history from them. While this effort is an important step toward greater recognition of the cultural

resources at Point Reyes, it may further contribute to creating an arrested landscape, as the criteria for nomination place focus on only those elements of the landscape with “integrity” and “significance.” The level of historic significance has not yet been decided upon; if it is determined to be of national significance, this will bring greater scrutiny to ranching practices, upkeep of buildings and so on, putting more pressure on ranchers for

195 Letter from Cherilyn Widell, State Historic Preservation Officer, to Acting Superintendent LeeRoy Brock, April 3, 1995. 196 Ultimately it will be up to the SHPO to decide if the period of significance stays as-is, gets pushed back to the 50-year rule, or possibly brought up to the present. 197 Discussion with Bob Page at PRNS Cultural Landscape Team Meeting, 10/25/99. 211 compliance with preservation rules.198 “Integrity” is defined as “the degree to which the landscape continues to portray its historic identity and character.”199 Some landscape elements that do not meet these criteria may still be considered “contributing” to the overall integrity of the cultural landscape, but others may get overlooked. Because the criteria were originally derived from architectural models and still rely heavily on material evidence, resources which have been removed (such as the extensive numbers of buildings demolished by the NPS) drop out of the story entirely. And, perhaps most importantly, there is no place in this process to consider what the residents think or feel about their own place, the meaning of the land to them. Nor does is continuous use by the same family over generations given any kind of special weight or consideration. The focus remains primarily on the buildings and other structures themselves, and not on the people and their experiences. The effort to document and plan for management of the cultural landscape is well underway. However, as pointed out by Alanen and Melnick, an over-reliance on codified standards for management “holds the potential to negate the very idiosyncratic landscape

qualities that set one place apart from another.”200 In addition, many of these efforts to recognize and manage the cultural landscape run counter to the institutional ideology already in place, and already the more “traditional” values in park management have conflicted with some proposed changes.201 It remains to be seen how many of these

ideas will actually see implementation, and what the overall effect will be on the Point Reyes landscape.

198 Interview with Thom Thompson, Cultural Resources Division, PRNS, February 5, 2001. 199 David Schulyer and Patricia O’Donnell, “The History and Preservation of Urban Parks and Cemeteries,” in Preserving Cultural Landscapes in America, Alanen and Melnick, eds. (2000), at 75. 200 Alanen and Melnick, “Introduction” (2000), at 17. 201 For example, the Maintenance Division was highly resistant to the proposal for hiring the historic preservation crew; this was cited as an example of “old patterns of behavior and management in the NPS,” that cultural resource management is still relatively recent in the NPS, and institutional momentum is still going in old direction, so it takes a while to change things. Interview with Gordon White, 3/31/00. 212 VII. Conclusion

Since Point Reyes was established as a National Seashore in 1962, NPS management has reshaped the landscape toward a greater reflection of the agency’s values of national significance, unchanging scenery, and natural resources. NPS policies, management practices, and interpretation have all contributed to these shifts in appearance and meaning. Point Reyes is portrayed to the public as a timeless natural area with a smattering of historic ranches, hiding the deeply constructed characteristics of the landscape. While not all of these changes have been the direct intentions of NPS staff, their cumulated effect is to overwrite the existing cultural landscape with a new set of meanings, remaking the local landscape into a National Park-scape. One possible explanation for many of the changes that have occurred at Point Reyes is to ascribe them to particular personalities. Because of the wide reach of discretion most park Superintendents enjoy, they have broad latitude in what resources will be emphasized or interpreted. Certainly PRNS had a Superintendent for many years with a very distinctive set of priorities and preferences in his management style. However, that interpretation is too simple. Many of the trends examined here had nothing to do with the Superintendent’s influence, but are a larger reflection of the ideological values that have long been embedded in the agency’s policies and practices. Furthermore, every staff member, including Superintendents, is trained and their values shaped by the prevailing agency culture; they develop their careers in the NPS at a particular time, and so take on the values of those times as their own. For example, the current Superintendent reflects a shift in the 1990s toward greater acceptance and emphasis on ecological sciences within the agency. However, the overall trend remains the based in the same basic ideological foundations, shifting Point Reyes from a locally- controlled, dynamic ranching landscape to a nationally-controlled, arrested natural landscape.

213

214 CHAPTER 5

Conclusion

The previous chapters have presented data confirming that the National Park Service (NPS) has a distinct effect on the cultural landscapes that it manages, reshaping them to reflect its institutional ideology that idealized parks as national, static, natural icons. This chapter will review these findings and discuss their implications for policy.

This project asks the basic question, what happens when an individual or group— in this case, the NPS—intentionally preserves a landscape? Preservation is a complex and contradictory process, yet it plays a major role in modern society. Groups interested in preserving landscapes from both an environmental and a cultural/historic perspective should be clear on what can realistically be expected from their actions. Bringing preservation and landscape theory together, this dissertation shows that what ends up being preserved is not the actual landscape as it was at the time of preservation, but those aspects of it that coincide with the values that preservationists seek to accentuate. Not preserved are the other cultural uses and meanings that helped shape the landscape in the first place; they are overlain or replaced by the social dynamic of preservation itself, which comes to be built into the landscape, both in physical shape and cultural meaning. The opening discussion of landscape theory centered on two main points. First, landscapes are dynamic, living places, where nature and culture intersect in a dialectic relationship, each influencing the shape of the other. Because of this interaction, all landscapes are produced in some way by human forces. All landscapes, whether they be natural or cultural, vernacular or “official,” exist in a relationship with the social groups who use them for their daily lives. People’s lives are directed to some degree by the

204 appearance and characteristics of the landscape around them, and in turn the landscape reflects their values and interests. Particularly landscapes reflect power relations, as one group actively tries to dominate the landscape or shape it according to their own vision or needs, or as groups conflict with one another over the uses and meanings of the land. Second, the process of deliberately framing an area as a landscape tends to “naturalize” its characteristics, including those influenced by social factors, causing the landscape to appear to have simply occurred, in a biologically and politically neutral fashion, without having been made or produced in any way. Deliberately designed and managed landscapes reinforce the values that created them, as people forget or overlook the possibility of alternative meanings and interpretations. Landscapes are inherently dynamic and constantly changing as both environmental and cultural forces shift, yet the impulse to preserve them works in the opposite direction: preservation seeks to prevent change, to hold resources static through time. And yet preservation theory suggests that even this goal is an impossible one, as preservation is itself a social force that shapes the resources that it strives to protect. Regardless of the original preservation motive, such actions form an idealized version of the natural or cultural past, and seek to restrict changes to those that coincide with the preservers’ values and interests. In this way, preservation also “naturalizes” and perpetuates the ideologies held by preservationists. As the NPS is the primary preservation agency for the U.S., it is important to understand how its policies and practices shape the landscapes it manages. Historical examination of the NPS as a whole shows the emergence and perpetuation of three ideological themes that underlie park management: national, natural and arrested. The earliest U.S. national parks, such as Yosemite and Yellowstone, were established explicitly to bolster national pride and create a sense of heritage for a still-young country. The basis of this heritage was the natural scenery itself, touted as far superior to that of Europe, and providing the U.S. with links to an ancient past. And because of their

205 symbolic importance, the parks could not be allowed to be changed by private actors, as had already happened at Niagara falls, but needed government involvement to preserve them for all time. These themes developed even before the NPS was established, and the agency was created specifically to manage and maintain them, so it adopted these themes as its own ideological foundation. These themes are so firmly entrenched in NPS policies and attitudes that they have prevailed even in the cases of parks that contain living communities. While the NPS caters to tourist visitors, residents have not historically been considered an acceptable part of the national park scene. Private ownership of land has been construed as an obstacle to effective park management. But expansion of the National Park System has increasingly resulted in creating new parks out of occupied and privately-owned lands, rather than setting aside areas the federal government already controlled. The NPS has made some attempt to change its approach to land acquisition and management in response to these new challenges, but the overall pattern is still one of removing the residents—perhaps more slowly than in the past—and replacing the living cultural landscape with a static natural-appearing one. While historic and cultural resources have gradually been internally accepted as part of the NPS’s responsibilities, they still take a back seat to natural resources, and their management continues the emphasis on unchanging representations of national significance. NPS guidelines for preservation of historic and cultural landscapes rely on measures of significance and integrity that favor older resources that have experienced less change. For example, a nineteenth-century ranch house that has been used continuously and remodeled in the 1950s has less historic integrity than one that was abandoned and thus left unaltered. In a living landscape, the former likely has more meaning and usefulness for the residents, yet the guidelines prioritize the latter for protection. The NPS has also tended to avoid resources that represent social controversy, and many park staff have resisted new historic and cultural preservation policies that they

206 perceive as out of tune with their idealized vision of what a park “ought” to include. The strength of the underlying ideologies, perpetuated as part of the agency’s culture and traditions, construes historic and cultural resources as less central to a given park’s mission than the qualities that match the ideal, a nationally symbolic, unchanging preserve of natural beauty. None of these ideological themes are particularly unexpected. It makes sense that a national agency would focus on creating parks with national significance. Arresting the particular scene in question is the primary goal of preservation, preventing the desired scenic beauty or historic connection from disappearing. And the insistence that nature must be empty of obvious human intrusion in order to appear “pristine” or “authentic” is well-documented in the last two centuries of American thinking about the environment. However, these ideological themes must be acknowledged and addressed if the NPS is to develop the sensitivity needed to manage cultural landscapes without completely rewriting them. Particularly if they are taking on inhabited landscapes and telling the residents they will be allowed to remain, these traditional biases against private property owners and residents in general must be countered explicitly from the start, to avoid the kind of “mission creep” that slowly pushes residents out in favor of more natural, more predictable landscape elements.

Landscape and preservation theories predict that these ideological themes will become written into park landscapes over time. The case study at Point Reyes National Seashore (PRNS) shows this taking place over the Seashore’s history, as the local significance of the area as a historic ranching community has been edged out by NPS reinterpretations of the landscape as nationally owned and managed, frozen in time and predictable, and increasingly natural and “pristine.” Despite early intentions to keep the pastoral section of park in private ownership, the NPS now owns and controls the entire landscape. The residents are no longer land owners but tenants, and their operations are

207 limited by NPS policies for environmental and historic preservation standards. Much of the built landscape of Point Reyes has been removed by the NPS, and that which remains is often left empty or used adaptively for purposes that relate more to the park’s continuation than the community’s interests. Roughly half of the peninsula has been reinterpreted as a pristine wilderness, and any remaining markers of previous human habitation or use have been removed or downplayed in the effort to make the actual landscape comply with its wilderness designation. In addition, theory suggested that the National Park-scape would come to be naturalized, or taken for granted, because the ways in which the landscape appears and is interpreted continue to reinforce the values steering its shape. In a similar to Barbara Bender’s discussion of the British National Trust, the NPS has edited out most of the ordinary people, replacing their 150-year experience of the peninsula as a dairy landscape with one focused primarily on the natural resources.1 Most visitors and park managers either do not remember or do not even know the previous meanings and history, and even the residents often agree now that the park was “inevitable.” This taking-for-granted is particularly evident in the way most people agree these days that the Seashore was “necessary” to hold back rampant suburban development, when evidence suggests the NPS proposals drove the trend toward subdivision as much as they prevented it. Most people only know Point Reyes today as a national park, and both the appearance of the landscape and the way the PRNS staff interpret it to the public reinforces the apparent inevitability of this outcome.

This research leads me to conclude that the NPS needs to address the powerful bias of these ideological foundations in its policies and practices if it is to succeed in protecting cultural landscapes. And evidence so far suggests that this kind of reform will take a tremendous amount of effort; NPS historian Sellars has criticized the agency for

1 Bender, “Stonehenge—Contested Landscapes”. 208 resisting incorporation of ecological science into its management approaches, which would seem to be a closer fit than cultural resource management to its basic ideological foundations. While the NPS has taken some noteworthy steps toward increasing awareness and sensitivity to cultural landscapes as a resource amongst its staff, such as the development of the national-level Cultural Landscape Program over the past decade, staff still tend to revert to the traditional ideals of what a national park should be: national, unchanging, and natural. The agency already manages a number of inhabited cultural landscapes around the country, however, so policies will have to be devised to better manage those parks. A key variable may be property ownership: In certain parks, such as Cuyahoga National Recreation Area and Boxley Valley in the Buffalo National River, NPS staff are experimenting with selling parcels back into private ownership. The hope is that ownership will give residents more security and a definite role in maintaining the cultural landscapes within the parks. Research will be needed to ascertain whether this is an effective strategy, particularly in the case of Cuyahoga, where the original NPS condemnation of private lands provoked extensive local controversy. Even more fundamental than land ownership, though, could be the sense of participation in landscape management. Many park residents have been living on and working the lands around them for generations, yet there is no formal role for them in determining management direction or procedures. Even the Cultural Landscape Inventories that are currently being accumulated by the NPS have no avenue through which residents can tell their own stories or suggest their own interpretations of what the landscape means. There needs to be greater resident participation in the processes of planning and managing cultural landscapes, for it is through their daily lives that the landscape was shaped and continues to be maintained. Some of the answer may lie in making a distinction between landscape “protection” and “preservation.” Protection of cultural landscapes is important, as they

209 remind us of the deep connections between societies and the lands they live on, and of the intricate interconnections between humans and nature. But preserving such places, maintaining them unchanged through time, is probably an impossible goal. As Raymond Williams has suggested, preservation requires a sense of distance and observation that conflicts with the day-to-day realities of working landscapes.2 Such places are inherently dynamic and changing, and so imposing a preservation ethic on them turns them into museum pieces rather than living places. Just as natural landscapes cannot function properly without all of their ecological components, cultural landscapes cannot thrive if elements of the connections to the people that have shaped them, via their cultural meanings and uses, are minimized or discarded by those who seek to preserve them. Protecting such places from social forces that would make their ways of life unlivable is possible, but it should not be our goal to preserve them into places, as Lowenthal describes, “pickled in aspic.”3 NPS policies should be designed to encourage the continuation of cultural landscapes with their residents in place, rather than try to control them and reshape them into monuments of national, unchanging nature.

2 Williams The Country and The City at 120. 3 Lowenthal PIFC at 244. 210 APPENDIX A: Identification and Evaluation of Landscape Components

Identification

In order to comply with the National Register's process of designation, the landscape components or “characteristics,” as they are referred to in Bulletin #30, must be identified and documented. Landscape characteristics are defined as “the tangible evidence of the activities and habits of the people who occupied, developed, used, and shaped the landscape to serve human needs; they may reflect the beliefs, attitudes, traditions, and values of these people.”1 A classification system, dividing the eleven possible characteristics into four “processes” and seven “physical components” guides the manager in reading and understanding the rural landscape. They are as follows:

Processes: 1. Land Uses and Activities 2. Patterns of Spatial Organization 3. Response to the Natural Environment 4. Cultural Traditions

Components: 5. Circulation Networks 6. Boundary Demarcations 7. Vegetation Related to Land Use 8. Buildings, Structures, and Objects 9. Clusters 10. Archeological Sites 11. Small-scale Elements

Together the landscape characteristics are organized to develop the historic context of the landscape in question. A written statement of this context must be included in the registration process. In addition, the process requires that historic research on the site or area, as well as a survey of the landscape be conducted. Suggestions on how best to complete these tasks are included.2

Evaluation

Using these characteristics and other historic materials gathered, the manager must then evaluate the rural landscape, by defining its historic significance, assessing historic integrity, and selecting boundaries. The types of significance are identified, again using National Register criteria for cultural heritage, as being present in districts, sites, buildings, structures, and objects:

A. that are associated with events that have made a significant contribution to the broad patterns of our history;

1McClelland et al, at 3. 2Ibid. at 8-12. 211 B. that are associated with the lives of persons significant to our past; C. that embody the distinctive characteristics of a type, period, or method of construction or that represent the work of a master, or that possess high artistic values, or that represent a significant and distinguishable entity whose components may lack individual distinction; or D. that have yielded, or may be likely to yield, information important in prehistory or history.

Ordinarily cemeteries, birthplaces, or graves of historical figures, properties owned by religious institutions or used for religious purposes, structures that have been moved from their original locations, reconstructed historic buildings, properties primarily commemorative in nature, and properties that have achieved significance within the last fifty years are not considered eligible for the National Historic Register. However, such properties will qualify if they are integral parts of districts that do meet the criteria, or if they fall within a list of seven additional categories.3

After applying the National Register Criteria, the area and period of significance must be selected. The area of significance refers to “that aspect of history in which a rural property, through use, occupation, physical character, or association, influenced the development or identity of its community or region.” The following areas of significance commonly apply to rural landscapes: agriculture, architecture, archeology, community planning and development, conservation, engineering, exploration/settlement, industry, landscape architecture, and science. The period of significance is “the span of time when a property was associated with important events, activities, persons, cultural groups, and land uses or attained important physical qualities or characteristics.” Properties may have more than one period of significance, but “continuous land use, association, or function does not by itself justify continuing the period of significance.”4

Integrity must be established for any property to qualify as eligible for listing. Integrity is manifested in seven ways: location, design, setting, materials, workmanship, “feeling” and association. Possible changes or threats to integrity must be identified, and the various elements within the landscape must be classified as contributing or noncontributing resources, based on their own integrity and association with the area and period of significance. All these factors are then brought together to weigh the overall integrity.5

Finally, boundaries for the rural landscape must be selected. To do this, the historic property must be defined, and appropriate edges must be selected. Edges are commonly defined by the use of: historic legal boundaries, physical boundary demarcations, rights-of-way, natural features, changes in nature of development or spatial organization, edges of new development, current legal boundaries, lines drawn along or between fixed points, and/or long-standing vegetation.6

3Ibid. at 20. 4Ibid. at 20-21. 5Ibid. at 22-24. 6Ibid. at 25-26. 212

213 APPENDIX B: Ranch Data, Point Reyes Peninsula/PRNS

Summary:

Historically, the Point Reyes peninsula has supported as many as 32 operating dairy ranches. As of 1960 on the Peninsula there were 15 dairy ranches on 19,000 acres, and 10 beef cattle ranches on 23,000 acres. Today there are 6 dairies still in operation: Nunes (A Ranch), Mendoza and Son (B Ranch), Spaletta (C Ranch), McClure (I Ranch), Kehoe (J Ranch), and Lobaugh and Mendoza (L Ranch). A seventh dairy, the Horick operation at D Ranch, ended operations a few years ago when the permit holder, Vivian Horick, died. There are also 5 cattle ranches: Lunny (G Ranch), Grossi and Evans (H Ranch), Grossi (M Ranch), Rogers (formerly part of M Ranch), and Murphy (Home Ranch). In addition, several old ranch sites leased for cattle grazing. In total, 17,040 acres on the peninsula are currently being grazed. All remaining ranches operate on either reservations of right (Kehoe, Murphy) or leases/special use permits.

Data culled from tract files, land appraisals, and Dewey Livingston, Ranching on the Point Reyes Peninsula: A History of the Dairy and Beef Ranches Within Point Reyes National Seashore, 1834-1992, Historic Resource Study (Point Reyes Station, CA: National Park Service, 1993).

Ranch Status Markers: *** = dairy ranch ** = beef ranch * = used for grazing only, no on-site operation a = buildings in adaptive use v = vacant, buildings still present x = vacant, no buildings

A RANCH -- George Nunes Dairy ***

Tract 05-114 – total acreage = 1,081 Purchased by NPS June 22, 1971, 20 year reservation of use and occupancy covering 771 acres. Entered an agricultural lease/permit in 1991; current permit runs from 10/1/96-9/30/01.

Grade A dairy, 1997 SUP allows a maximum of 500 cows. In 1982 storms destroyed the old hay barn and damaged the horse barn. These were respectively replaced and repaired in 1985.

Note that a couple, Mr. & Mrs. Tony Montalbano, owned a single-family residence on tract 05-114, and lived there for ~25 years, in a house built by Montalbano himself. House and moving costs paid by NPS (they moved to a mobile home in Santa Rosa).

213 In 1927 three acres were reserved from ranch on east at Chimney Rock for the Coast Guard Lifeboat Station.

Tract 05-123, 83 acres. This parcel was split off from A Ranch in 1870 to build the Point Reyes Lighthouse. Title transferred to the NPS from the Coast Guard in 1978.

214

B RANCH -- Joseph H. Mendoza & Son Dairy ***

Tract 05-109 (3.40 acres, purchased from Brazil & Mendoza), 05-115 (main tract), 05- 108 and 05-120 (both very small). Tract 05-115 and 05-120 total 1,356.38 acres. Purchased by NPS April 28, 1971, 20 year reservation of use. Now on a renewable lease. Note also wharf lease in file.

Grade A dairy, 1997 SUP authorizes a maximum of 850 cows, plus 150 dry.

Ranch was originally purchased from the Shafter estate by Joseph V. Mendoza and his wife Zena, after immigrating from the Azores, in 1919. They lived on the ranch after 15 years of tenancy on the Peninsula at other ranches. Joe V. died in 1950, Zena remarried and lived in the old ranch house until she died in 1968. Their son, Joseph H. Mendoza was born on Pierce Ranch. He now lives with wife Scotty in residence next to road, built in 1951. Their son, Joe Jr. or Joey, lives in the original ranch house with his family, and runs the dairy.

Ranch still retains major elements of 1870s configuration, though modernized.

Appraisal of tract 05-115 in central files dated 10/70 by Hector Leslie, SF. Appraisal of tract 05-109 in central files dated 1/9/71 by B. Harding.

Tract 05-108: NW corner of B Ranch, 3.5 acres. Purchased by condemnation from Mr. & Mrs. Benjamin Davis, title passed 10/5/77. Have right of use and occupancy for non-commercial residential use for 50 years. Property was originally constructed as housing for U.S. Naval Coastal Station. Main building converted into a single family residence, also light tower converted to rental apt./cottage. Also other improvements – look-out tower (same as light tower?), water system & tank, etc. Parcel was divided out of Joe & Zena Mendoza’s tract 4/23/48 (plus right of way). 1975 memo from Field Solicitor – Mr. Davis can’t block the road, although he has a right to a key to any locked gate the NPS might put up. 1994 did a re-survey of the boundaries of the reservation.

C RANCH -- Spaletta Dairy ***

Tracts 05-118 and 05-119 Purchased by NPS in 1964 from the Gallaghers (Tom & Virginia, formerly Grossi, daughter of Alfred) – operated by Ernie Spaletta (son of Virginia’s nephew) and family. Had been bought in 1919 by Joseph Nunes & Joseph Avila (both bachelors), then the Gallaghers bought it in 1946. Spalettas had been leasing it from the Gallaghers since 1955.

Grade A dairy, 1997 SUP allows maximum of 430 cows, plus 100 dry.

215 Two Appraisals in central files: 1) dated November 5, 1963 by W. H. Murray. Includes site map of buildings, plus detailed description of each one. Ranch had ~500 head at the time: 180 milking cows, 30 dry cows, 100 bred heifers, 100 open heifers 1 & 2 years old, 90 head of young stock, 1 bull. 2) dated January 20, 1964 by H. P. Kermickel. Includes lots of photos, list of buildings and values, but no map. (No info on # of cattle.)

D RANCH -- former Horick Dairy v

Tracts 05-121 and 05-122 – 05-121 is 1,191.88 acres, purchased by NPS December 1, 1971 from Alice Hall; 05-122 is 6/89 acres, purchased by NPS November 9, 1971 from Vivian Horick.

Purchased from Alice Hall (Vivian Horick’s mother, maiden name Codoni) in 1971 (note she died in 1991, after living in the old ranch house for 55 years) – 20 year reservation of use, after 1991 operated Grade A dairy (260 cows) on a special use permit. Vivian Horick died 1997, special use permit revoked by NPS in 1999 due to disagreement among her heirs as to who might take control of it. Buildings are currently vacant.

E RANCH -- George Nunes Ranch #2 * (but bldgs. occupied)

Tract 05-101 – 1,471 acres, acquired 6/71. Purchased by NPS 1971, dairy operations moved (by brother Marvin Nunes & mother Tessie Nunes Brazil) to Sonoma County in 1972, had a 20-year use and occupancy reservation, now leases the ranch for replacement stock for A Ranch (~175-200 animals), plus oats for silage.

Two employees and their families reside in existing houses. The original ranch house burned in late 1950s, replaced by Nunes in 1963-64.

When they moved the dairy operation to Windsor in Sonoma County, Nunes and Brazil were paid relocation benefits. There was a legal question at the time as to whether NPS had to pay for improvements at the new ranch. Tract file has documents from 1974 asking them to prove that their move to Sonoma was a direct result of having been acquired by NPS. NPS determined it was not liable for improvement costs. Brazil and Nunes appealed in December 1977, won in November 1979. NPS then appealed, appeal was denied (twice) in 1980.

F RANCH -- Gallagher Ranch site *

216 Tract 02-147 (main ranch and buildings, 1,566.07 acres), purchased by NPS January 4, 1967, and Tract 02-148 (148.20 acres in SW corner of ranch, near Ranch E), purchased by NPS August 31, 1965. Tract file does NOT include original assessment.

Operate under a special use permit for grazing (operated as dairy only until 1946, last by Tom & Virginia Gallagher) by Gallagher heirs. Note that Virginia is daughter of Domenico Grossi, & sister of Alfred.

F Ranch was the location of the old Point Reyes post office & was “center of commerce” for the dairies (with the schooner landing on the estero) until 1920s. Gallaghers leased it from 1913-1919, owned it from 1919-1967, now leasing it again.

Ranch buildings demolished by NPS in 1966. No information in tract file. Site is marked by a grove of Monterey cypress, corrals and fencelines. Site also used by residents of PRNS for picnics and other get-togethers; two picnic tables are near the corral.

G RANCH -- Lunny Ranch **

Tract 02-167, 1,191.54 acres. Owned by RCA since 1929, which tore down most of the buildings in the 1950s. Purchased by the Trust for Public Land in 1977, which sold it to the NPS in 1978.

Joseph Lunny Jr. operates on a special use permit for beef, SUP is for 95 animals.

Main ranch house burned in 1935, and was replaced in the same location. Lunny’s father bought the dairy business in 1947, did extensive improvement to the dairy. Dairy continued to operate until 1975, when environmental restrictions became too expensive to comply with.

NPS was granted permission by the county in Aug. 1991 to construct a wayside pullout for the RCA interpretive exhibit. Note that RCA condemned the property in 1929 because owner James McClure wouldn’t sell; RCA wanted only 500 acres, but McClure felt that losing that much of the acreage would have made it hard to run the dairy profitably. McClure then bought the Pierce Ranch with proceeds from the condemnation.

H RANCH -- Grossi/Evans Ranch **

Tract 02-151, 1,148.00 acres. Purchased by NPS July 9, 1971, 20-year reservation-of-use on 984 acres, 1991 entered a lease.

217 Originally operated by Alfred Grossi & wife Florence, then daughter Dolores & husband Dan Evans took over operation in 1976 and switched from dairy to beef. SUP is for 280 animals.

The old dairy barn burned in 1930, and was replaced with a similar building. Alfred Grossi inherited the ranch after his father’s death in mid-‘50s. The old ranch house was occupied until 1958, knocked down and burned 6 years later.

In the tract file there’s a draft lease for cattle operations with wording modifications from 1988: clearly NPS were trying to figure out the terms ahead of time. References to extensive negotiations with Grossi and family. Had permit ready to be signed in 1987, although it wouldn’t start until 1991.

I RANCH -- Ron & Bob McClure Dairy ***

Tract 01-108, 1,691.97 acres. Purchased by NPS June 18, 1971. Reservation of use on 1,320 acres, 20 years.

Grade A dairy, 1997 allows maximum of 976 cows, plus 130 dry.

In a letter to the NPS dated August 11, 1981, the McClures sought a longer term lease so as to have some security of tenure before undertaking extensive remodeling of the facilities. In follow-up letter from their attorney 8/27/81, he notes that McClure was “deprived of the opportunity to effectively participate in the reservation period as the decision was made, without his consent, by Bank of America in their then-existing trust capacity relative to the property.” A memo from January 28, 1982 discusses possibly granting a lease for the period after the reservation of use expires.

The McClures are the oldest continuously operating dairying family on the Peninsula. James McClure was born in Ireland 1868, came to Olema 1889, and rented a number of Point Reyes Ranches. Evnetually he bought the dairy business at G Ranch in 1906, and bought the land in 1919. James rented it to sons John and Jim in 1922 and moved to Novato. Jim McClure leased I Ranch from the O.L. Shafter estate in approximately 1930. He was born at L Ranch, raised at G Ranch, and married Jack Gallagher’s daughter Helen in the 1920s. He purchased the ranch in 1939, built a reservoir in 1942, and the Grade A barn in 1946. Jim retired after Helen died in 1967. Jim, Rob and Bob McClure were profiled in Farming on the Edge. Jim died in 1993.

Former calving barn was burned in an NPS training session in 1982 or ‘83. In 2000 the McClures got permission to build a loafing barn, and are currently working on design plans with NPS.

J RANCH -- Kenneth “Skip” Kehoe & Sons Dairy ***

218 Tract 01-103, 1,263.02 acres. Purchased by NPS October 28, 1971. Reservation of use on 615 acres, 30 years (expires 2001). Tract file does NOT include original assessment.

Grade A dairy (had 350 cows in 1993, current totals not listed in file).

J Ranch was operated by the Gallaghers in the early years. James Kehoe, cousin of Ed Gallagher, purchased the personal property on the ranch and leased the land in October 1922, later purchased the ranch in 1939. The Kehoes tore down and replaced many of the old Shafter buildings in 1950s & ‘60s, including old ranch house, torn down 1964. Jim Kehoe died 1968, after having been a strong voice in his opposition to the Seashore. Skip is his youngest son.

File includes a memo dated May 31, 1989: apparently the NPS had buried a dead whale in Skip Kehoe’s pasture, in hopes of producing a skeleton display for the VC. Kehoe was “very upset,” in part because he was not allowed to bury his dead cows there. “His bottom line was if he cannot bury cows he wants the Park to remove the whale.” No indication of how this was resolved.

In 1994 the Kehoes applied for a permit to install a new mobile home. NPS required that an “uninhabited structure” on the ranch (located below the reservoir dam) be demolished as a fire training exercise prior to issuance of a permit.

K RANCH -- site (also Laird’s Landing) x/*

Tract 01-111 – James Lundgren Condemned by NPS in 1976, retained 50-year reservation on 2 acres. His son lived in a trailer on the 2 acres until ~1983. Ran livestock illegally on the rest of the 341-acre parcel (refusing to sign an SUP or pay rent) until they were evicted in 1982. Lundgren died in 1990. His estate sold the two acres & remainder of reservation term to NPS on March 10, 1992.

Note that Lundgren was originally part of a group of dairymen, operating as Roberts Dairy in San Rafael, which bought the entire K Ranch in 1939. He built a Grade A barn and shipped the milk to the facility in San Rafael. He leased the ranch to several people in the 1940s-50s. Lundgren then became the sole owner in 1960 and subdivided the ranch into 7 parcels. He sold a beach parcel to Robert Marshall in 1960, another parcel to Deep Cove Ranch Inc. (“a development group”) in 1969.

Also Victor Sousa, a Miwok descendant, tried to assert squatters rights at Laird’s Landing, where he claimed his great-grandparents had lived since 1830. But they had never paid taxes on the land, which is essential to squatters’ cases, & so Lundgren successfully evicted him in 1954 after a lengthy court battle.

K Ranch buildings torn down and buried on site in 1976.

219

Tract 01-112 – Deep Cove Ranch A memo in tract file from 1972 indicates that the partnership had initially refused to sell (in 1971 they wrote to the NPS that further negotiation was of no use) but were threatened with condemnation. The parcel was then purchased by NPS on September 6, 1972.

Tract 01-104 (Laird’s Landing) – Robert Marshall, Jr. Note that Marshall also owned Laguna Ranch (tract 02-134) and sold them both at the same time to NPS on March 25, 1971 – total acreage = 1,868.31. Condemnation had been proposed/requested. No buildings on the property at the time of purchase. Joint appraisal of this property plus the Laguna ranch in central file, dated September 30, 1964 by H. P. Kermickel.

Tract 01-105 – Harriet W. Richards (plus Clayton Lewis buildings) 109.42 acres, threatened with condemnation November 5, 1971, sold to NPS June 30, 1972. Apparently Richards then filed some kind of lawsuit against the NPS in July or August, which prevented closing. No indication in tract file as to what the lawsuit was for, or what became of it. On August 11, 1972 NPS threatened to go ahead with the condemnation if the lawsuit was not withdrawn. Deed filed for record on September 5, 1972.

Evans/Grossi have grazing permit (not clear which parcel) for 72 beef cattle.

PIERCE RANCH (Upper and Lower) v

Tract file does NOT include original assessment.

Tract 01-102 – 2,536.76 acres. A condemnation suit was filed by NPS against Bahia Del Norte Land and Cattle Co. (note that all the partners are listed in the suit) on August 20, 1971. Final judgement for condemnation January 22, 1973 – and Bahia immediately agreed to amount of just compensation. Title to tract passed to NPS the same day.

Note that Mervyn McDonald had a SUP that expired October 31, 1978. He sold his mobile home on the property to NPS May 16, 1980.

Dairy until 1945, then used as a beef ranch until 1980. Lower ranch buildings damaged by wind in 1972 and demolished by NPS in 1975. Basic structural stabilization started at Upper Ranch in 1980. Note storm damage in winter of 1983/84. Upper ranch determined eligible for Register January 24, 1985.

L RANCH -- G. W. Lobaugh and J. H. Mendoza Dairy ***

220 Tracts 01-113 and 01-109 (126.56 acres retained by Ernest Ghisletta when he sold the ranch to Mendoza in 1960). Purchased by NPS in 1971, 20-year reservation-of-use expired in 1991, in November 1992 they entered a lease. Tract file does NOT include original assessment.

Grade A dairy, 1997 SUP allows 430 cows, plus 70 dry.

Ghisletta bought the ranch in 1939 (although rented & lived at Black Mtn. Ranch near PRS), put in a great deal of effort to keep the old buildings instead of replacing them with new ones. Also refused to give/sell the county a right-of-way to McClures Beach, so the road got rerouted in 1942 giving H, I and J ranches a transportation advantage. Grade A milking barn added 1947. Ghisletta rented the ranch to various people before selling to Mendoza. Lobaugh was a long-time employee of George Nunes at A Ranch. Is only one of the remaining thirteen Shafter & Howard ranches that retains its original buildings & layout without major replacements and additions.

Lobaugh & his wife live in the old house and manage the ranch.

M RANCH -- Domingo Grossi Ranch **

Tract 02-150 – 1,192.63 acres. Beef (dairy until 1971) -- purchased by NPS July 9, 1971, 20-year reservation-of-use, 1992 renegotiated as a lease. Rich Grossi holds the SUP and operates the ranch, 175 animals authorized on the SUP.

Domenico Grossi bought ranch in 1940, along with H Ranch – son Alfred operated H, son Domingo operated M. Grossi tore down calf barn, dairy & schoolhouse in 1941, build Grade A barn same year. Built new house in 1962, hired hands lived in old house until they tore it down in 1965, described as “more trouble that it was worth.”

ROGERS RANCH (Part of M Ranch) **

Tract 02-149, 398.0 acres. Rogers Ranch was formerly part of M Ranch but split off in 1946, in operation with beef and sheep. Purchased by NPS July 12, 1971, 20-year reservation-of-use on entire acreage, now operates under a lease with 56 animals authorized.

The Rogers were Domenico Grossi’s sister Mary and her husband David Rogers. They retired in 1977 and moved to Petaluma; David died in 1989, Mary in 1991. The ranch is now operated by their son, Domingo Rogers.

221

N RANCH -- site of Heims Ranch *

Tract 02-105, 1,115 acres. First ranch to be purchased by the NPS, July 24, 1963. Heims lived in Berkeley, ranch was leased at the time to David Lemos and son M.E. Lemos, who lived at the ranch. Their lease was to expire in October & they moved to Santa Rosa. (From 1962 appraisal.)

Operated as a Grade A dairy from 1941 (grade A in 1946)-1962. Heims sold 5 acres in 1951 to Larry Jensen for oyster processing facility. Original house burned in the 1940s, some other buildings destroyed and replaced after WWII -- most remaining buildings torn down in 1960s and ‘70s. Note also the Point Reyes I.D.E.S Hall (Portuguese religious & social org.), built in 1890s was located on N Ranch, at intersection of SFD & Home Ranch Road. Served as meeting hall & polling place for all of Point Reyes. Used as a hay barn after 1940s or so, torn down by NPS. Leased for grazing to Merv McDonald in Marshall, under a special use permit (90-100 animals).

Ranch had 11 buildings at the time of purchase. Note that they were not all torn down right away; the house on the hill (main residence) was used as park housing. Also bunkhouse was likely used as the original location of the Point Reyes Field Seminars.

Two appraisals in central file: 1) 7/15/62 by Edwin F. Jordan (from Napa). Includes “Interview with Owner” section. Good description of buildings, no map. Many photos. Interview with owner (p. 10) indicates that the Heims were very cooperative with the NPS, also note that Murphy was planning to subdivide his adjacent ranch for residences, but Heims would not allow Murphy the right-of-way over his ranch.

2) 7/1/63 by Craig Hubbard (from Stockton). Good description of buildings – main residence, dairy buildings and “warehouse” (old IDES bldg.). No map.

HOME RANCH -- Murphy Ranch **

Tract 02-109 – note that there’s VERY little in the tract file, only a fax of the original deed. Beef cattle (dairy off and on previously, also some agriculture) -- purchased by NPS in 1968, reservation of use and occupancy runs until 2005, use an additional 3,045 acres at Drakes Head and Christmas Tree Point under a special use permit (320 animals).

Christmas Reyes Tree Farm is/was Tract 02-107, 106.66 acres, purchased by NPS in August 1970. There’s title information on it from the county dated from 1965. Murphy sold to the Collins in 1961 for $100,000 (~$1000/acre).

222 Murphy bought ~10,000 acres in 1929, included all of Drake’s Bay (stretching from the Kellhams to the Heims property). Sold portions of his original holdings to Ottinger, Marshall & Turney in the 1930s/40s. Had intended to subdivide – formed New Albion Properties Inc. Also joined with Turney & Frank Merz to form development corporation, Limantour Lands Inc.

May 18, 1964 Appraisal byWilliam Murray. Notes that the ranch had ~500 cows, 450 calves, 100 yearlings & 40 bulls. Second appraisal dated December 24, 1964 by Kermichel.

The Home Ranch is the oldest ranch complex within PRNS, and contains the oldest known building on the Point (the Shafter ranch house, reportedly built in 1857). Most of the Shafter-era buildings remain on site.

DRAKE’S HEAD RANCH (site) *

Part of Tract 02-109, Home Ranch – see above.

Operated as dairy until 1923, when it was leased to Western Evergreen Company, a group of Italian farmers. 1,000 acres were planted in artichokes. From 1934-41 a Japanese family, named Kimura, also grew peas as a cash crop, and after the war the Gomez family operated a frozen pea farm. Abandoned by mid-1950s, NPS tore down remaining buildings in the 1960s.

Ranch site is marked by a grove of eucalyptus trees, also some rubble remaining from the house foundation.

O RANCH -- Oporto site x

Tract 02-153 – purchased by NPS from M. P. Ottinger in August 1970.

No good information as to when the ranch was built or how long it operated as a dairy. Ranch was occupied in the 1920s by Eugene Bonini, and in the 1930s by Frank Murphy (father of Leland Murphy). NPS demolished the remaining buildings (no record of how many) in the early 1970s, after evicting a tenant.

Site is marked by a few eucalyptus tress and rubble from the building foundations, as well as the old road to the ranch.

R RANCH -- New Albion site x

Tract 02-111 – 1,182.00 acres, purchased by NPS from Sayles A. Turney, October 1970.

223 From Appraisal, September 1968, done by Bruce Harding. Doesn’t have a detailed site map. Was an operating ranch with associated buildings: Grade A milk barn, 2 cabins, 5 misc. sheds, and one abandoned house (photos in appraisal). Made no allocation of value for them – not in good enough shape.

Turney had sold a 25.40 acre parcel (tract 02-112) in March 1964 to Robert M. and Doris M. Nave – purchased by NPS in August 1971. Turney also sold a 36.3 acre parcel (tract 02-144) on western shore of Limantour Estero in 1964 to Mr. Finnegan, who built a vacation home there.

Note earlier appraisal from May 1964, done by W. H. Murray, with better maps. Had been operated as a partnership between Turney & Lundgren until 1960 (then Lundgren kept the retail business). Operated as a Grade A dairy, first by Turney & then tenants. Includes site map of improvements – 9 total. Milk barn in good condition, 3 cabins & garage in fair condition, dwelling “very poor,” no plumbing etc.

Buildings were demolished by the NPS after purchase. Ranch site is marked by a grove of eucalyptus trees.

GLENBROOK RANCH -- site x

Not clear which tract represents this ranch.

800-acre ranch operated as a dairy from 1884 until the mid-1930s. Ottinger purchased it in 1961 and used it as a hunting reserve until NPS purchased it in 1971. The remaining house and calf barn were torn down by the NPS. Road to ranch is now overgrown and impassable. Some old fencelines remain.

S RANCH -- Muddy Hollow site x/a (i.e. a few houses at Limantour used as park housing)

Tract 02-124 – owned by Drakes Beach Estates, purchased by NPS in 1963.

Appraisal in central file, dated March 6, 1964 by W. F. Willmette – note this is an update (from October 1963) regarding recent trends in valuation for the Rancho properties (14 total). Lists owners of each parcel (132 all together) & individual values in: -- Drake’s Bay Unit 1 (approved 1/17/61 by Marin Board of C. & planning commission) -- Drake’s Bay Unit 2 (disapproved by planning commission 7/24/61 but then by B of C 8/1/61) -- Drake’s Beach Estates Subdivision 1 (approved by planning commission and B of C by later summer 1960) -- other in Rancho Punta de Los Reyes (R) Includes aerial photos & snapshots of houses, plat maps of each unit.

224

Tract 02-125, Limantour Spit, condemned from Drakes Estates (as part of negotiated sales deal) in 1963. Appraisal in central file, dated December 10, 1968 by B. Harding. 23 parcels – only four parcels had cabins or second homes (all owner-constructed & not designed or built for re-sale). Includes some photos.

Muddy Hollow operated as a dairy until 1940s, when Leland Murphy sold it to a group of investors. Buildings were torn down in 1952. A house was built on the site and a nursery operated during the 1960s. Ranch site is now marked by a grove of Monterey cypress, dating back to 1900.

T RANCH -- Laguna site (and Hostel) a (partial)

Tract 02-134, purchased by NPS from Robert Marshall, Jr. in 1971 (see Laird’s Landing).

Two appraisals in central file: 1) Joint appraisal of this property and Laird’s parcel in central file, dated September 30, 1964 by H. P. Kermickel. Laguna described as a “gentleman’s livestock ranch.” Good photos of buildings – also complete cost and descriptions, site map – had 4 houses (main dwelling, 2 for ranch help & a guest house), various barns etc. “Some older improvements are dilapidated.” Used at the time for beef grazing. 2) Appraisal dated June 1, 1970 by B. H. Harding. Still leased for grazing, main dwelling estimated built 1890, remodeled several times. Some photos, no map.

Leland Murphy owned the ranch until 1945, and operated the dairy until the late 1930s. The U.S. Army leased the ranch from 1940-45 for use by the U.S. 30th Infantry, building roads and barracks and installing gun emplacements overlooking Drake’s Bay. Robert Marshall, Sr. bought the ranch in 1945, operated as a beef ranch until 1955, then ran a commercial cut-flower enterprise in the 1950s, leasing the surrounding pasture for grazing. Also used for hunting and recreation activities.

Three of the original buildings remain. The last of the army’s quonset huts was torn down in 1986 and replaced by the Clem Miller Environmental Education Center.

U RANCH -- site at Coast Camp x

Purchased as part of Bear Valley (Kelham) ranch in 1963. Fell into disuse by 1930s. Some outbuildings used by owners of Bear Valley ranch until early 1960s. From 1963 appraisal of W Ranch, describes barn in fair condition, storage bldg. fair to good, also corrals in fair condition. These were torn down by the NPS.

225 V RANCH -- Vision site x

Tract 02-153, sold by Ottinger (along with Oporto) to NPS in August 1970.

Was a 1,200-acre dairy until 1920s. Purchased in 1929 by Leland Murphy, then sold to Ottinger in early1940s, by which time the buildings had been torn down. Site is marked by a grove of eucalyptus trees, adjacent to the Mount Vision Overlook parking lot.

W RANCH -- Bear Valley/Park HQ a

Tract 03-125 – note that the Kelhams also owned tracts 03-124 and 03-130. Purchased by the NPS on October 1, 1963.

1925 sold by Rapp to Colonel Jesse Langdon (who then closed dairies at U, Y and Z ranches) Langdon lost much in Depression, including Grade A certification – bank foreclosed in early 40s?, Langdons evicted April 1943. Purchased by Eugene Compton from Nevada – tore down old W Ranch house (that was used as a horse barn) & replaced with dairy foreman’s residence & bunkhouse (now HQ). 1949 Compton sold to Grace Kelham (heir to Spreckles fortune) – who within a year sold dairy herd & demolished barns, converted to beef operation. George DeMartini, a ranch hand, remembers tearing down Country Club buildings for the Kelhams around 1950 & later the coastal barns for the NPS. He also lived in the bunkhouse (now admin building) until evicted and was then hired by NPS.

NPS first rented a building from Kelhams for their land office, then purchased the whole ranch (7718 acres). Appraisal in central file, dated June 20, 1963 by W. H. Murray, covers the entire original parcel (8,027 acres). Kelhams retained 309-acre parcel between Bear Valley Road and Hwy. 1, – so the remaining parcel that was acquired was 7,718 acres. Has great aerial photos, also map shows barns at U, Y and Z sites. Good photos of buildings & site map for W Ranch – none for the other three ranches except descriptions of buildings – see bldgs. #20-25 – each site has a barn & storage shed: -- Y Ranch: barn in poor condition, shed in fair, also corrals etc. in good condition. -- U Ranch: barn in fair condition, storage bldg. fair to good, also corrals in fair condition. -- Z Ranch: barn in “rather poor” condition, with corrals, loading chute and squeeze chute; also feed shed outside of proposed acquisition, in poor condition.

Also note tract 03-135, a half-acre owned by the Vedanta Society down the road from BV Ranch (at trail junction) – had a frame house with porches in fair condition, demolished by the NPS.

226

Y RANCH -- x

Purchased as part of Bear Valley (Kelham) ranch ranch in 1963. Apparently abandoned in 1930s. From 1963 appraisal of W Ranch, describes barn in poor condition, shed in fair condition, also corrals etc. in good condition. These were torn down by the NPS.

Z RANCH – Sky Camp x

Purchased as part of Bear Valley (Kelham) ranch in 1963. Abandoned in late ‘20s/early ‘30s. From 1963 appraisal of W Ranch, describes barn in “rather poor” condition, with corrals, loading chute and squeeze chute; also feed shed outside of proposed acquisition, in poor condition. These were torn down by the NPS.

LAKE RANCH -- x

Tract 04-109 Owned since 1940 by William Tevis, who operated a cattle ranch, also sold oil exploration rights to National Exploration Co. in 1947 and timber rights to Sweet Lumber Co. from Oregon in 1957. Leased ranch to Truttman brothers in 1950s & ‘60s, then to Jo Ann Stewart. Tevis kept the old ranch house in good condition & spent a lot of time there himself. Sold his interest in the ranch to the Sweet brothers in 1963. They then sold lots & began a housing development, which became a key issue for “Save Our Seashore” movement. Purchased by condemnation by NPS in September 1971; all buildings destroyed soon after.

SOUTH END/PALOMARIN RANCH -- x

Tracts 04-110 (3,148.22 acres) and 04-111 Bought by Christ Church of the Golden Rule in 1950 (from Spreckles heir) & developed into a religious community, with MANY cabins, homes etc., & using most of the old ranch buildings. Also sold timber rights for eastern part of ranch to Sweet Lumber in 1956, who logged it. Purchased by NPS in two transactions (September 20, 1963 and August 10, 1964). All buildings, including old ranch ones, were burned in 1966 except the old school on Arroyo Hondo, which is now used by the PRBO as a field station.

Appraisal in central file for tract 04-110, dated April 18, 1963 by H. Bolla Sr. Site analysis and description, photos, with approximately 60 different structures.

227

GLEN RANCH -- x

Tract 03-130, owned by the Kelhams, sold with Bear Valley Ranch.

Roughly 1,500-acre ranch operated as a dairy until the mid-1920s, when it was abandoned. By the 1930s the buildings were gone and the land leased for grazing. Site is now used as a hike-in campground.

WILDCAT RANCH -- x

Not clear which tract represents this ranch.

Roughly 1,500-acre ranch operated as a dairy until the mid-1920s. Owner Francis Blair leased roughly 150 acres to the U.S. Army during WWII, which established the Wildcat Military Reservation above the north of the ranch site. The Army built two concrete fire control stations, and installed a radar unit and two coastal searchlights on the shore.

Blair sold the ranch site to William Tevis in 1945, also Boyd Stewart bought the forested east side of the property. Tevis leased the land during the 1950s to Douglas Hertz, who established the Bolema Club, a pheasant hunting camp. Hertz eventually bought the property, then sold it to the NPS in 1966, which demolished the remaining buildings (all of the original ranch structures were already gone) and established the site as hike-in campground. Site is also marked by a grove of eucalyptus trees.

Appraisal of Bolema Palisades, Inc. Property (labeled Wildcat Ranch) – note this is a copy, sent by Thomas Kornelis, Realty Officer, P.R., to Regional Director, WRO – dated March 31, 1965. “As the land involved is involved in condemnation no comments are made on the appraisal.” Note that it’s re: a civil case, “U.S. v. Timber Cutting Rights on 3.693 Acres”, also includes Boyd Stewart property. Appraisal prepared by Walter Willmette October 29, 1963. “Estimate of Just Compensation fot the Taking of Timber Rights on the Bolema Palisades, Inc. Property.” Property was purchased by Hertz in May 1960 and leased to the Bolema Club with an option to purchase (1,085 acres). Then lease amended on September 18, 1961, deleting option and reducing rent & area leased (now 400 acres). Includes description of buildings: Club House (remodeled 1957), several houses & cottages, other misc. – most built 1960.

Second appraisal done by Edward Morphy, San Rafael, August 15, 1962 (covers Alamea, Bolema and PR Land & Dev. parcels). A.M. Sweet held timber agreement on parcel. Includes site map & floor plans, building descriptions, photos.

SUNNYSIDE RANCH -- x

228 Not clear which tract represents this ranch.

Dairy until 1930s on 800 acres, then abandoned and buildings torn down. Site (along the Inverness Ridge Trail) not marked at all and is overgrown with brush.

229 APPENDIX C: Ranch Data, Olema Valley and other GGNRA

Summary:

In the Olema Valley, there are no longer any dairies; remaining are three beef ranches (R. Giacomini, Rogers and McFadden), 5 old ranch sites now grazed (Randall, Lupton, Truttman, E. Gallagher, and Genazzi), two horse ranches (Stewart and Wilkins); and three ranch complexes used by the park (Truttman, Hagmaier and Teixeira). On other GGNRA lands administered and managed by PRNS (i.e. the Tocaloma area), there are 3 beef ranches (Zanardi, McIsaac and Cheda) and two ranch sites used for grazing (Jewell & N. McIsaac); also important sites in private ownership (Gallagher, Vedanta, & Genazzi remainder).

Also note Waldo Giacomini Ranch currently being purchased by NPS for inclusion in the GGNRA, dairy shutting down within the next five years.

Data culled from tract files, land appraisals, and Dewey Livingston, A Good Life: Dairy Ranching in the Olema Valley, Historic Resource Study (Point Reyes Station, CA: National Park Service, 1995).

Ranches listed from South to North. All tracts numbered under GGNRA numbers unless otherwise indicated. Original appraisals are in the tract file unless otherwise indicated.

Ranch Status Markers:

*** = active, operating dairy ranch ** = beef ranch * = used for grazing only, no on-site operation a = buildings used adaptively v = vacant, buildings still present x = vacant, no buildings

Olema Valley

WILKINS RANCH (Rancho Baulines) v

Tract 03-154 – approximately 1,400 acres.

Wilkins family owned the ranch from 1866, ran dairy until mid-1960s, sold in 1970 to N. Charney under heavy tax burden & low production. Charney then sold to the Trust for Public Land (TPL) in 1973 after financial difficulties; TPL transferred land to GGNRA in July 1973. Info in file re: this deed – concerns about meeting requirements of Public Law 91-646 i.e. TPL couldn’t appear to be acting as the

227 NPS’s “agent” & not offering the seller the same amount as the agency’s approved appraisal.

Mary Tiscornia operated as a beef & horse ranch (only 25 AUMs) on a special use permit, permit revoked by NPS in May 2001 and Tiscornia moved out. Eight historic bldgs remain. Tract file contains no appraisal of the main ranch. The ranch is now being planned for use as a conservation and education center. The existing structures will be modified and used for office space, classrooms, and residences, and a parking lot would be built.

Also Tract 03-155, SE corner of ranch along lagoon, 29.56 acres, appraised November 15, 1973 (no buildings), purchased from the Wilkins family in 1975.

Also note tract 03-158, 2 acres in Dogtown, purchased from Barbara Connelly February 27, 1975, has right of use & occupancy until 2000 – no offer in file for special use permit to continue residence.

McCURDY RANCH x

Tract 04-101 – 1,666.90 acres. Dairy until 1920s; has been vacant since ~mid-‘50s. No buildings remain since mid-‘60s. Ranch buildings were directly across Hwy.1 from the Strain-Texeira Ranch. Purchased from Righetti estate on June 27, 1974. There was disagreement over the value – NPS wanted to condemn, but it looks like they reached a settlement.

TEIXEIRA RANCH (Former Strain Ranch) a

Tract 04-116 (PRNS) Also Tract 04-102 (GGNRA) – 23 acres on east side of Hwy. 1, purchased December 2, 1974, no buildings on this parcel. Strains operated ranch from 1856-1920, Teixeiras from 1920-present (they bought it in 1941 after 20 years of tenancy). Formerly was a 248-acre dairy, now Teixeiras lease only 3.6 acres -- the rest is ungrazed. Purchased by NPS on December 8, 1971. Former Silveira residence (south of the main residence) is now NPS housing (since 1991). 9 historic bldgs, 3 historic structures (include. 2 bridges) remain.

HAGMAIER RANCH a

Tract 04-106 (PRNS)

George Hagmaier purchased ranch in 1937 and ’38 (2 parcels). Operated as dairy until end of WWII, then stocked with beef.

228 Purchased by NPS in 1972. 5 historic buildings remain, plus water system. Used for park housing & storage, now the location of the new Pacific Coast Research Center. The buildings are being renovated and rewired for use as research offices and residences.

Historically included a second ranch, the Biesler Ranch, the last buildings at which were removed by NPS in the early 1970s (the main house & dairy barn burned down in 1966).

Appraisal in central file, dated January 15, 1971 by R. E. Kleiner. Note reference in memo to a second appraisal by B. Harding, dated May 29, 1971. Includes map of site/buildings & good description of improvements – also in the back has floor plans.

229 RANDALL RANCH */v

Tract 04-103 – 1,305 acres.

In 1911 Randall heirs sold the ranch – went through various owners until Gottshalk- Sieroty Co., pasture rented to R. Giacomini. NPS purchased on May 6, 1974. Superintendent removed remaining barns and outbuildings soon after, & intended to demolish house too – but hasn’t succeeded yet! House declared eligible for National Register in 1979. Is now protected as rare bat habitat (Townsend’s big-eared bat colony in the attic)

Tract file includes form/letter concluding that Zwall proposal for historic lease was un- economic and not feasible, dated July 16, 1985. (Note Zwall is/was tenant of Sieroty cabin.)

Appraisal from April 5, 1973 by B. Harding – has no site map, one photo on p.12.

R. Giacomini still has a grazing SUP on a portion of the Randall parcel.

R. GIACOMINI RANCH **

Tract 04-104 – purchased from Wells Fargo Bank? Very little in tract file, no appraisal.

note Olema Lime Kilns are on this ranch (SW corner, more or less) Giacomini purchased dairy business in 1958, operated until 1972, when they changed over to beef. NPS purchased 84 acres on western edge of ranch from Samuel & Alberta Smoot in 1971; the Smoots sold the rest in 1974 to a banker, John Connelly, who almost immediately sold it to the NPS. Giacominis continue to operate beef ranch (~100 AUMs) on special use permit.

8 historic buildings remain on the ranch. “Three rare historic chicken coops and a shed (OV-06.04, 06.05, 06.09, 06.10) were demolished around 1990.” (p. 174 in Good Life)

FIVE BROOKS – Pinkerton and Benevenga residences (not ranches)

Pinkerton = Tract 04-107 Benevenga = Tract 04-108, purchased 1975

Both residences were originally associated with Lupton Ranch, divided out in 1930s & ’64, respectively. Five Brooks was a residential subdivision from 1912 – not many lots sold; Boyd Stewart bought 60 acres in a tax sale (late 1940s).

230 Sweet Lumber Co. leased land in 1956 & constructed a sawmill, operated until 1963. Stewarts sold 301 acres to NPS in 1971, keeping 3 acres for horse camp – now Five Brooks Stables is a park concession owned by Fred Vaughn.

Pinkerton house was rented to Ken Baughman, step-son of William Pinkerton – moved out Dec. 1999. Emma Benevenga held reservation on the other, scheduled to leave by February 8, 2000 – there’s an estimation of market rent from February 1, 2000, suggesting $750/month. House is rented by Gustavo Medina.

LUPTON RANCH (Former Parsons Ranch) v

Tract 04-109 –

Has been in the Parsons/Lupton family since 1865. Dairy shut down in 1945, was in sheep until 1970, when Earl Lupton retired from the Air Force & moved to the ranch, started a beef operation. Also built a house overlooking the highway in 1971, where he lived until recently.

Purchased by the NPS on March 25, 1974. Lupton had reservation of use & occupancy on 3 acres, expired March 1, 1999 – has SUP (75 AUMs) on remaining 833.5 acres, expires March 31, 2002. Was granted a 2-year SUP for residential use on the 3 acre parcel, so that the expiration dates would coincide. From Good Life, p. 201 – Sansing had the two-story section of the old house knocked down “in direct defiance of NPS cultural resource mgmt. policies.” Subsequently water tower & barn were stripped by wood salvagers & effectively destroyed. Dewey provides description of the buildings anyway.

Appraisal contains some photos, no site map. Dated September 23, 1973.

Lupton died in September 2001, and the NPS has not allowed his business partner Manuel Brazil to continue running their 70-head beef operation. It is not yet decided whether the land will be leased for grazing in the future, or to what use the buildings will be put.

STEWART RANCH (Former Olds Ranch) ** (horses)

Tract 05-101 –

Stewart family owned from 1924-1974, when it was purchased by NPS. (Note they did not occupy it until 1932, when former tenant’s lease was up.) Upgraded dairy to Grade A in 1935. Daughter Jo Ann took over dairy business in 1950 – herd was at 280 in 1972, when they sold the dairy contract & began boarding horses & raising beef (50 AUMs, plus some more seasonally on “Olema Creek” – not sure where this refers to?).

231 12 “potentially historic” bldgs, & various historic structures – all adapted to 20th century uses.

TRUTTMAN RANCH */v/a

Tract 05-102 (unimproved grazing land only – Stewarts have SUP) Tract 05-112 – 23.2 acres including the actual ranch. Nothing in the file about buildings other than the appraisal – no map.

Had originally been three different land holdings. Armin & Frank Truttman (brothers) started out as tenants in 1943, in partnership with their father Joseph Truttman and dairyman Manuel Silva. They never owned the ranch themselves – it was owned by developer Neils Schultz (Schultz Investment Co.) when NPS purchased it in 1974. Dairy operation ended in 1974, after NPS purchase – Truttmans raised beef cattle on a special use permit until 1990, when they retired. Armin died in October 1993.

Most of the ranch buildings were removed by NPS in February 1994 without Section 106 compliance – all the remaining ones but the house (used for park personnel) are now vacant. Removed buildings (10 total) are listed in Good Life at p. 258-260. Note small 1944-era house was removed in 1993, burned for fire training.

Letter in tract file from Superintendent dated February 10, 1984, allocating Truttmans’ grazing permit to Jo Ann Stewart “once you decide to discontinue operations.” Note that this is ten years before the Truttmans actually retired. Grazing land now leased to Jo Ann Stewart (140 AUMs).

DeSOUZA RANCH v

Was a dairy (leased to Wilson Beebe) until December 1975, when NPS purchased – Beebe was relocated & buildings torn down.

Land not leased for grazing.

ROGERS RANCH **?

(just north of Olema/Sir Francis Drake Blvd.)

Clarence Rogers (from an old Nicasio ranching family) ran dairy until mid-1970s, then changed to beef.

GGNRA bought 219.3 acres in 1981, Rogers retained ownership of home & outbuildings. Had 25-year reservation of use for livestock ranching – not clear whether he still has an SUP of not.

232

BEAR VALLEY RANCH

See PRNS Ranch Summary

McFADDEN RANCH **

McFadden only bought ranch in 1971 – ended dairy operation & changed to beef.

NPS purchased in 1989 – McFadden has 25-year reservation of use; also has an SUP for ~50 AUMs.

E. GALLAGHER RANCH *

E. Gallagher sold in 1962 to an SF pharmacist, who then sold to Ottinger in 1965. Peter Coyote & other “theater hippies” lived on the ranch in late 1960s-70s – last resident left in 1985. Estate sold ranch to NPS in 1987 – previous to sale the leaseholder (no record of the name) demolished the buildings. Today R. Giacomini has SUP for grazing and feed crops.

Tocaloma Area

GENAZZI RANCH **

Harold Genazzi operated dairy until federal buyout in 1987. NPS bought all but 60 acres (buildings are all on this parcel) of his grazing land in 1988, with 25-year reservation of use.

Now raises beef & replacement heifers (SUP for ~65 AUs).

ZANARDI RANCH **

Dairy until 1972, Zenardis then leased the land but still resided on the ranch. Son Pat Martin took over ranch in 1984, same year the Zenardis sold to NPS. Martin has SUP for ~45 AUs.

McISAAC RANCH (former Codoni) **

Dairy ended in 1973 – have raised beef & dairy cattle since. NPS purchased in 1983.

233

N. McISAAC RANCH *

Only used for grazing since 1960. Marin Co. Fire Dept. burned abandoned buildings in 1960s. Purchased by NPS in 1973 – Don McIsaac still has grazing SUP.

JEWELL RANCH

Sold in 1933 to Roberts Dairy (Lundgren & Turney partners) – last used as dairy in 1950s. Truttmans then rented grazing land.

NPS purchased in 1974 (from Lundgren) – abandoned buildings were demolished. Lundgren kept cattle on the parcel until he died – now Frank and Robert Merz have SUP (~40 AUs).

CHEDA RANCH

Owners Lawrence and Elizabeth Bono bought ranch in 1972, then sold to developers Cheda Associates. Planned an “equestrian oriented development” – but NPS bought in 1982. Ranch occupied by tenants of Cheda Ranch Associates & grazing land leased to Don McIssac.

GALLAGHER & SHAFTER RANCHES both within park boundaries but NOT purchased. Shafter Ranch = Vedanta Retreat, Gallagher Ranch is slated for purchase when funds become available. Family sold the dairy business in 1985, now raise replacement heifers.

234 BIBLIOGRAPHY

Unpublished Material

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