here is no question that Alfred T Runte's National Parks: American Experience and his related articles are valuable-or that they have stirred controversy. essay by Richard W. Sellars is but the latest attack. Sellars focuses on what has come to be known as the thesis, which is the most original portion of Runte's work and central to it. Runte's reply restates-and qualifies-his case. In the judgment of this reviewer, Sellars does not go far enough in his critique. thesis, I submit, is flawed at its heart by presentism-the historian's cardinal sin of judging past events by present-day standards and values. Moreover, Runte's work appears inadequately informed by relevant historical literature. History is a cumulative discipline; a scholar ignores the work of his predecessors at his peril. Yet Runte, seemingly intent upon forcing all into the procrustean bed that is the thesis, ignores contrary conclusions of others-or denies that their arguments are informed by evidence. creation by Congress of the early national parks needs to be viewed within the context of the times, and especially in light of the prevailing perception of the proper role of the federal legislature in dealing with public lands. A host of studies of federal land policy have made clear that in the nineteenth century Congress was generally expected to encourage national development by speedily transferring public lands to private ownership. Land questions focused not so much on whether this should be done, but on how to encourage family farms while preventing engrossment of the land by a wealthy few. When Senator John Conness and others described proposed parks to fellow congressmen as encompassing lands, they meant that creating the parks in question would not be a violation of Congress's basic responsibility to encourage family farms and the democracy they supposedly buttressed. One did not need to be a dyed-in-the-wool Jacksonian to speak thus. Such arguments were frequently rhetorical, as Sellars notes, intended to disarm the many champions of Jacksonian democratic ideals who had the power to thwart creation of any parks to which they chose to offer serious opposition. Debates over the creation of parks were shaped by class as well as ideological considerations. It was easy to see them as undemocratic reserves for the wealthy. When the first national parks were being established, few Americans could afford to take their leisure far from home. Speaking of Yellowstone and Yosemite in 1882, the San Francisco Chronicle put it bluntly: The richforeign and native-enjoy a monopoly of these pleasure grounds. It is wrong in principle and oppressive in practice for any government to tax the common people and the poor for the exclusive benefit of the Not until the 1920s, when the automobile revolutionized American use of leisure time, could Robert Sterling Yard write, We can no longer dismiss national parks as travel resorts, or consider them from a class point of view.... One should hardly be surprised if Conness and others went out of their way to further the belief that the land involved in proposed parks was worthless-that is, that the advocates of parks were not proposing to take from poor would-be farmers to give to the rich. But one should not interpret such statements too literally. If no one had seen economic value in the land that was to be made into parks, there would have been little reason to protect them with park status. lands might have been worthless for agriculture or mining, but, as Sellars points out, they could be readily put to other uses, most notably to attracting tourists. Facilities to cater to visitors sprang up during the late nineteenth century near almost every accessible natural wonder. They appeared near some even earlier, threatening to destroy much of the beauty that had called the facilities into being. Against such uses, national park status promised at least some protection. In his rebuttal, Runte tries to escape the implications of this for his thesis by limiting his definition of worth to the use of natural resources that further national development. He is especially contemptuous of those who carried out digs in order to obtain Indian artifacts. They were vandals, rather than people seeking Automobiles revolutionized Americans' use of leisure time and made national parks accessible to greater numbers of tourists. Winding through the dense forests above are visitors to Mount Rainier National Park, ca. 1912. S. C. Lancaster lantern slide, courtesy R J Fah i
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Open Access
Sep 1, 1987
Helen A Fitts + 1
