Parks, Politics, and the People

Wirth, Conrad; Grosvenor, Melville

Civilized man has fortunately retained an instinct for holding on to the reality of his undisputed identity as an integral part of the universe. Colonel Richard Lieber, an ardent conservationist whose unstinting efforts gave Indiana its exceptional state park system, used to quote Francis Thompson: "Thou canst not stir a flower / without troubling of a star." An astute observation, certainly, projected to its not illogical conclusion. It is undoubtedly this feeling for the homogeneity of all creation that prompts so many of us to get outdoors and "back to nature" as a respite from the travail of everyday living. Henry David Thoreau succinctly explained his personal motivation: "I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived." The importance of reserving space for what we have come to call recreation has long been understood. The first American settlers provided their towns with commons or village greens, and as communities grew larger they included parks in their civic planning. As the nation's westward expansion proceeded in earnest after the Civil War, thoughtful people advocated conservation practices to insure the protection of suitable lands and waters for public enjoyment. Although their influence was initially only slight at a time when the store of such natural resources seemed inexhaustible, they scored a remarkable early success with the establishment of a state park in the Yosemite Valley of California in 1864, and with that the movement got well under way. Congress acted as early as 1832 to reserve acreage in the Hot Springs region of Arkansas for public use, but the first area (first in the world, in fact) to be designated a national park was Yellowstone, in 1872. This was done at the urging of three men from Montana who had explored the region in the northwest corner of their neighboring Territory of Wyoming in 1870 to investigate the reports of fantastic natural phenomena—hot pools, geysers, and volcanoes—that had been circulated for over fifty years by hunters and trappers, who were the only white men to have visited the area. The Montanans not only confirmed these tales, which until then had been taken only lightly, but also described the awesome beauty of Yellowstone's canyons, waterfalls, and forests. Actual photographs of these natural treasures made the following year by a United States Geological Survey expedition helped to convince Congress that the area should be set aside and protected as a primeval wonderland.

Parks, Politics, and the People

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