National Park Idea Research Articles

This is Dinosaur: Echo Park Country and Its Magic Rivers ed. by Wallace Stegner

256 Western American Literature The values of the Basin, according to Ehrlich, crystallize quickly. People are strong on scruples but tenderhearted about quirky behavior. It is a place, she writes, which is “darkened only by the small-mindedness that seals people in. Men become hermits; women go mad.” Ehrlich highlights her book with piercing images of the sheeptown of Lovell, the Basin’s fierce summers and winters, the fading Indian customs, and the details of losing a lover and gaining a husband. She is a keen watcher of symbols and the harmony between man, animal, and the land, and writes only about events that have truly changed her life. JANET BENNION CANNON Utah State University This isDinosaur: Echo Park Country and Its Magic Rivers. Edited by Wallace Stegner. (Boulder: Roberts Rinehart, 1985. 93 pages, $24.95 hardcover, $8.95 paper.) This book, first published in 1955 by Alfred Knopf, figured prominently in the great Echo Park controversy of 1954-1955, when Dinosaur National Monument was threatened with two Bureau of Reclamation dams that would have dramatically altered the primitive setting of that spectacular region. It is reprinted now with a new foreword by Wallace Stegner, a note from the publisher of the new edition, and many new illustrations, but it retains the handsome appearance of the original Knopf edition. The book was, as Stegner points out in his new foreword, both a clarion call to defenders of the monument (copies of the first edition were sent to all Congressmen) and an evocation of the attractions and values of Dinosaur National Monument. As both, it was a success, and Stegner and the publisher of the new edition hope it will once again serve its dual purpose; the monu­ ment is once again threatened, this time by dams upstream that would radic­ ally alter the streamflows in the monument, thus degrading primitive aquatic and riparian ecosystems. Stegner proposes, with some force, that the monu­ ment be raised to national park status, rightly supposing that the change in classification would heighten public interest and concern. This is Dinosaur was written by a team of naturalists, conservationists, and western writers, and every chapter remains vivid and enjoyable after thirty years: Stegner on human settlement and exploration, Eliot Blackwater on geology, Olaus Murie and Joseph Penfold on natural history, Robert Lister on Native Americans, Otis Marston on river running past and present, David Bradley on touring the Monument, and Alfred Knopf on the meaning of the national park idea. No attempt was made to update any of these chapters, and indeed very little would have been necessary even had such changes been appropriate. It is just as well to read this one in its original form, both as an excellent introduction to the Monument and as a classic of environ­ mentalist publishing. Reviews 257 The passage of time reveals perceptual changes, however. Murie and Penfold, writing in 1955, speak hopefully of plans for dams at Cross Mountain and Juniper—the dams that Stegner now fears—because such dams might improve the fishing in the Monument by clearing the water of much silt. Since those days, aquatic ecosystems have gained our respect enough so that keeping (and appreciating) them undisturbed is more important than making them more productive of certain preferred game fish. But that does not reduce the book’s value, or the utility of a reprint at this time. This is Dinosaur should always be in print as a reminder of an extraordinarily important episode in American environmental history, and as a celebration of of a little-appreciated national treasure. PAUL SCHULLERY Livingston, Montana Owen Wister: Chronicler of the West, Gentleman of the East. By Darwin Payne. (Dallas: Southern Methodist University Press, 1985. 377 pages, $24.95.) The dust jacket of Darwin Payne’sbook depicts a young dandy taking his ease in a wooden chair. He is impeccably, even daintily, dressed in a tailored dark suit cut to emphasize his lean, masculine physique. His hands, below spotless shirt cuffs, seem carelessly but ostentatiously displayed to show the absence of callouses, broken fingernails, or other signs of toil. His carefully trimmed beard and moustache, set off by a high collar and elegant cravat, are neither...

Reply to Sellars

A long with other critics of National Parks: The American Experience, Richard W. Sellars first of has missed the origins of the term worthless lands. The definition is not mine; rather it was Senator John Conness of California, opening the very first speech on behalf of the national park idea in the United States, who resorted to this distinctly paradoxical note: I will state to the Senate, he began, this bill proposes to make a grant of certain premises located in the Sierra Nevada mountains, in the State of California, that are for public worthless [italics added], but which constitute, perhaps, some of the greatest wonders of the world.' The phrase all public purposes itself deserves special scrutiny. The wording reassured Conness's colleagues that no universally recognized alternative to preservation had been detected in Yosemite. Gold especially being absent, the United States certainly could afford to recognize the valley for its substantial intrinsic worth. According to Sellars, this limitation of the term worthless to natural resources implies a narrow definition of land value. However, it was precisely this meaning of the term that was adopted and understood by Congress, not only in 1864, but throughout the history of park establishment. Historically, land defined as natural resources, not as personal real estate, has formed the basis of our national economy. The United States can survive without spreading skyscrapers over every acre of Central Park; it cannot survive without oil, natural gas, timber, waterpower, minerals, and agriculture. It is misleading, in other words, to suggest that the possibility of rimming the Grand Canyon with condominiums can be equated with the feasibility of damming the chasm for hydroelectric power, irrigation, and water storage.2 Ever since the commercialization of the brink of Niagara Falls, similar projects, although lucrative, have been condemned as purely individualistic and therefore crass. Almost simul-

National Parks: The American Experience by Alfred Runte

340 Western American Literature Nelson’s tough-minded examination of life as it is in the West as it is will not suit the palates of those who prefer life as they wish it had been in the West that never was. Those with more adventurous tastes will find it heady stuff indeed. JAMES K. FOLSOM The University of Colorado, Boulder National Parks: The American Experience. By Alfred Runte. (Lincoln: Uni­ versity of Nebraska Press, 1979. xiv 4- 240 pages, $16.50.) There are ample ironies and intelligent insights even in Runte’s title, for the many conflicts over land use he discusses, coupled with several styles of popular historical consciousness, can certainly be defined as “the American experience.” The parks embody the myth that we are a “wondrous” people in a “wondrous” land (“scenic nationalism”), yet they also embody the cultural conflict between belief in “the sanctity of private property” and the conviction “that no individual had the right to own a national monument.” The tensions between these oppositions are further complicated by the shifts in the argument of what a “park” is or ought to be, and one of Runte’s central stories is to trace the national park idea at several cultural levels as it moves from a nineteenth-century preoccupation with “panorama” to the 1960s’ conception of “ecosystem.” The chronological narration of how our national parks emerged as cul­ tural entities allows Runte to discuss the criss-crossed (or maybe cross-eyed) function of visualization as a mass mediation in national life. Runte’s contri­ bution to the literature of land, eye, and expansionism is to detail concretely what happened to land and how metaphorical and ideological representations acted as historical forces in the creation of both real estate and a geo-centered cultural identity self-consciously and (later) pridefully different from Eur­ ope’s. Runte’s first three chapters link the rise of mass media to the operations of an iconography of landscape ideologically inseparable from the rise of “scenic nationalism.” By mid-century, we recall, the United States acquired the Rockies, Texas, the Southwest, California, and the Pacific slope, an awe­ somely compressed expansion and one making the East “the audience to frontier events.” In the pages of the New York Tribune Greeley intoned typologically that the redwoods were big “when David danced before the ark,” and in 1865 Bierstadt sold his canvas “The Rocky Mountains” (1863: 6/ x 10') for $25,000 (a record for an American painter) and of course saw his works and those of other artists mass-duplicated as prints, newspaper and Reviews 341 magazine illustrations, and engravings. With the additional publicity of the Washburn Yellowstone articles in Scribner’s, the Hayden Survey of the Yel­ lowstone in the early 1870s, and with the Northern Pacific Railroad’srecogni­ tion that it “would be the sole beneficiary of the tourist traffic” to the northern Rockies, the time for the national park idea was fully coincidental with the materialism and economic structure of the Gilded Age, with the full swelling of “scenic” or “cultural nationalism,” the notion of the rustic “resort,” and with the “concept of useless scenery.” Runte’s remaining chapters frequently use the case study method. The need to preserve Mt. Rainier below timberline, for example, was argued by an elderly John Muir, who saw early on that an icy summit could take care of itself but that the flora and fauna of the lower slopes were in clear and present danger of becoming a wipeout of black stumps. Differences, confron­ tations, and ruptures of all sorts Runte locates finally in two competing economies of meaning — on the one hand, one investing the land with moral values, a surrogate cultural historicism (the Grand Canyon is equal to a European cathedral), and a nationalist sublime (a “suspended” or “primitive America” existing as a “classroom”) ; and on the other, an opposed economy realizing the land’s commodity exchange and use values, its potential as deferred or future payoff, and a nationalist resource much like a bank. Yet another topic this book approaches is the American (but by now global) conversion of directly lived life into a spectacle, which is the domi­ nant...

The national park system in the United States: An overview with a survey of selected government documents and archival materials

The idea of national parks originated in the United States over a century ago. This article examines the evolution of the unique concept and suggests selected research aids, government documents, and archival holdings useful for further study of the national park system.

The National Park Idea: Origins and Paradox of the American Experience

Next article No AccessArticlesThe National Park Idea: Origins and Paradox of the American ExperienceAlfred RunteAlfred Runte Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Volume 21, Number 2April 1977 Published for the American Society for Environmental History and the Forest History Society Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.2307/3983461 Views: 34Total views on this site Views: 34Total views on this site Journal History This article was published in the Journal of Forest History (1974-1989), which was continued by Forest & Conservation History (1990-1995). © 1977 Forest History Society, Inc. All rights reserved.PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

A Park to Save the Arabian Tahr

There is at present no national park in any part of peninsular Arabia. The FPS therefore welcomed the chance to help Dr Harrison and Major Gallagher formulate their plans for a park in Oman to help save the Arabian tahr and also pioneer the idea of national parks in the Arab world. The FPS approached the Omani authorities, who readily agreed to allow Major Gallagher to make the preliminary survey, and the Society is also sponsoring the proposed scientific expedition in April 1975 described in this article. Michael Gallagher's photograph above was taken in the area.

Conservation in the Sea: A Survey of Marine Parks

The idea of national parks and reserves in the sea has developed slowly, but the increasing popularity of underwater swimming, fishing and coral collecting makes it urgently necessary to protect marine life. Like their counterparts on land, marine parks are usually a great tourist attraction – Kenya has recently created two – and a careful balance has to be achieved, with some areas reserved for tourists and others as sanctuaries where also scientific studies can be made.

The National Parks and Reserves of Argentina

The idea of national parks in Argentina started in 1903 with the gift of 7,500 hectares to the Argentine nation by Francisco P. Moreno, one of the earliest Argentine naturalists. But even this area, since greatly enlarged, did not receive legislative guarantee until 1934, after the late Dr. Hugo Salomon had repeatedly insisted that the integrity of national parks and reserves could only be assured by legal enactment. Fourteen areas, including three still only projected, are set aside as national parks or other forms of nature reserves in Argentina. Of the six northerly reserves all but Iguazú and Finca El Rey belong to the Chaco formation. All the southern reserves lie in the Cordillera of the Andes, except for Laguna Blanca in the Precordillera and the national monument Los Bosques Petri-ficados in the Patagonian plateau. Los Alerces, Nahuel Huapi, Lanin and Iguazú conform more or less to the requirements of national parks laid down by the Convention on Nature Protection and Wild Life Preservation in the Western Hemisphere 1940; this the Argentine Government has signed.

The National Park Idea: How to Interest the African Public

The world's first National Park was the Yellowstone Park in the United States of America, established by the United States Congress in 1872 “as a pleasuring ground for the benefit and enjoyment of the people”. This great Park, of over two million acres, was soon followed by others, first in America and then elsewhere, in a world-wide movement which has gradually been gaining impetus and which still continues, East and Central Africa being amongst the last and most tardy recruits to the field. Throughout, the emphasis has been on the preservation of wild land areas for public outdoor recreational and educational use. In 1933 the first move was made at international level to give tangible expression to this movement in the “Conference for the Protection of the Fauna and Flora of Africa”, held in London during that year and attended by delegates from all over the continent: other international meetings have followed.