Robin Winks on the Evolution and Meaning of the Organic Act

Winks, Robin

HISTORIANS CONCERNED WITH THE NATIONAL PARK SERVICE, managers in the Park Service, and critics and defenders of the Service frequently state that the Organic Act which brought the National Park Service into existence in 1916 contains a “contradictory mandate.” That “contradictory mandate” is said to draw the Park Service in two quite opposite directions with respect to its primary mission; the contradiction is reflected in management policies; the inability to resolve the apparent contradiction is blamed for inconsistencies in those policies. The apparent contradiction is contained in a single sentence of the preamble to the act. That sentence reads, in addressing the question of the intent of the Service to be established by the act, that the Service is to conserve the scenery and the natural and historic objects and the wild life therein [within the national parks] and to provide for the enjoyment of the same in such manner and by such means as will leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations.1 This paper is an attempt to determine the intent of Congress with respect to the Act of 1916. It is the work of an historian, not a legal scholar. The historian recognizes that the intent of the whole of Congress in passing an act, and the intent of the individuals who framed that act, do not perfectly coincide; that intent must nonetheless be interpreted as individual; that intent changes; and that the law of unintended consequences looms large in any legislation.