The Home Front
BOHN, WILLIAM E.
THE HOME FRONT By William E. Bohn The Story of Our National Parks I don't wonder that this country is hard for outsiders to understand. I have lived here all my life and sometimes it strikes me...
...This past month, for example, I have been visiting three or four of our national parks...
...The other day, I put this question to my friend John S. McLaughlin, Superintendent of Grand Canyon National Park...
...In addition, there are some 60 other places preserved and looked after for various reasons...
...Charles Evans Hughes urged the safeguarding of "the beauties of nature . both from the ruthless hand of the destroyer and from the grasp of selfish interest.'' In 1912, in a special message to Congress, President Taft urged the establishment of a bureau of national parks...
...Included within its 181 parcels of land are some of the most spectacular and exciting sections of the earth's surface...
...Some extraordinary beauty of mountain or valley or canyon would attract attention and a group of citizens would be smitten with the idea that it should be preserved for posterity...
...But it was not until 1916, under the influence of Franklin K. Lane, Wilson's Secretary of the Interior, that the National Park Service was finally set up...
...In all, the Park Service administers about 21 million acres of land...
...In 1908, Roosevelt called a conservation conference at which a speaker proclaimed: "We have for a century stood actually, if not ostensibly, for an uglier America...
...Pressure would be brought to bear, Congressmen would become interested and a bill would be passed to preserve forever as Federal property some particular mountain or valley or canyon...
...In this biography, written by Robert Shankland and published by Knopf, you see two Americas in conflict...
...The fight carried on hy Steve Mather until his death in 1930 must now be waged by others...
...is admirably fitted to carry on...
...A man coming to this country from abroad would be astonished by this exhibition of public service for the general welfare...
...The ruthless despoilers were on the warpath again...
...Fortunately, the present director...
...From the day in 1872 when Yellowstone National Park was established down to the present time, there has been a battle royal between fortune-making Americans and public-service Americans...
...From 1872 to 1916, there was no national park system...
...let us here and now resolve to stand openly and solidly for a more beautiful America...
...Within an hour or two I had discovered in the Grand Canyon bookstore a copy of Steve Mather of the National Parks and had transferred my attention from a canyon to a man...
...There I saw thousands of my fellow citizens, young and old, enjoying the beauties of wild places and at the same time getting some insight into the natural sciences and into our national history...
...Conrad L. Wirth...
...Yet he would learn that numerous millionaires have given land and money to this park system and that the directors and superintendents are giving it faithful and intelligent service for salaries much smaller than they would receive in private industry...
...And this man, Steve Mather, who was a rich man and one just born to make money, led the squadrons of those who battled to secure and preserve our natural heritage...
...He has been taught that this is a capitalist country, that we are a lot of selfish individualists, that here everyone is working for his own benefit...
...Such a visitor would inevitably ask himself how such a system could come into being in a country of private enterprise...
...From then on, progress has been steady...
...The great formative years of the park system came under Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson...
...During the Harding era, the park men had to do battle once more...
...Every time there was a move to add a new park or to enlarge an old one there would be a political fight...
...He also lined up behind the movement such leading citizens as John D. Rockefeller Jr., who gave millions of dollars to the park system in money and land, and Frederick Law Olmsted, the brilliant landscape architect who designed New York's Central Park...
...But near the end of his book author Shankland warns: "The years have by no means armored the national parks enough to permit any conservationist to relax...
...In almost every case, the lumbermen, the miners, the cattlemen or the oilmen would be hot on the trail of Congressmen or Cabinet members trying to horn in on the domain which had been set aside for public pleasure and profit...
...He gave me a good piece of advice: "Read the biography of Steve Mather...
...Steve Mather was a close friend of both Presidents and their Secretaries of the Interior...
...I have lived here all my life and sometimes it strikes me as the strangest place in the world...
...In the books and pamphlets provided by our National Park Service I learned that this bureau of our Interior Department has charge of 29 areas designated as parks and 83 which are called national monuments...
...From this time on, either Mather himself was director of the service or it has been in the charge of one of the men inspired by his ideals...
...They were beaten back...
Vol. 40 • August 1957 • No. 32
