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The Story of the US National Parks - Eastward Ho!

Until 1919 all the national parks had been established in the West. There were reasons for that: the land was rich in magnificent scenery and natural wonders, and much of it already belonged to the government. But there were reasons for eastern parks too. The scenery, though not so grand, was certainly worth preserving, and the wildlife was even more endangered. Besides, only the wealthy had the leisure and the means to go west and stay for weeks at the great rustic hotels. Creating national parks closer to the people would help build the public support that was urgently needed.

The first eastern park, created in 1919, was along the rugged granite headlands of the Maine coast. Called Lafayette National Park, it later became Acadia. Farther south, the citizens of North Carolina and Tennessee made hundreds of thousands of small donations toward Great Smoky Mountains National Park. In much the same way, Shenandoah was born in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. Public donations were also important to Kentucky's Mammoth Cave.

At the same time, a new kind of park enthusiast was emerging -- the philanthropist. A wealthy Bostonian, George B. Dorr, gave much of his fortune to Acadia. A tract of 5,000 acres near Carlsbad Caverns was given by William Pratt and his wife. When it came time to establish Grand Teton, Great Smoky Mountains, Acadia, and Shenandoah, John D. Rockefeller, Jr., donated large tracts of land.

With each passing decade the story broadened. America was coming to value its wildlife, and so in 1934, for the first time, a national park was authorized for its preservation. This was Everglades, home to great flocks of elegant, endangered birds. In 1940, a rocky cluster of islands in the cold waters of Lake Superior became Isle Royale National Park, reachable only by boat.

Playgrounds or preserves?
After World War 1, the parks became accessible by automobile, and the number of visitors soared. By the 1920's and 1930's, people were touring the nation's wonders and using them as playgrounds. It was just what friends of the national parks had most wanted. Signs went up identifying scenic features, museums were filled with mounted animals and geological specimens, and park rangers became teachers, interpreting the parks to crowds of visitors.

Sometimes education became amusement. In Sequoia, tunnels had already been cut through giant trees. Yosemite had one, too -- and something else besides: during the summer, glowing coals were dumped over the cliffs of Glacier Point at dusk, creating a "firefall" that delighted visitors. In Yellowstone a spotlight was mounted atop the Old Faithful Inn to bathe nighttime eruptions of Old Faithful in colored light. Bear-feeding shows were held each evening, complete with grandstands and dozens of garbage-gobbling bears.

But the boom of those years was nothing compared with the explosion of visitors that began in the 1950's and continues today. Crowding became a problem. Tired vacationers were often faced by "Campground Full" signs; those who found accommodations were troubled by noise and lack of facilities. To answer the demand, more parks were established -- Arches, Biscayne, Canyonlands, Capitol Reef, Channel Islands, Guadalupe Mountains, North Cascades, Redwood, and Voyageurs -- and many others were expanded.

Still it had become clear by the mid 1970's that we had some tough choices to make: the national parks could not be, at once, wilderness sanctuaries and public playgrounds. Other kinds of parks and recreation areas must be used for sports and entertainment; the national parks must remain unique natural areas. To prevent over development, campsites were limited and reservation systems were introduced. To protect the backcountry, many roads were closed to private vehicles. To maintain the sense of wilderness, noise was curbed. To save our living heritage, a great deal of new thought was given to the management of wildlife.

We have progressed a long way in our attitude toward wildlife. The demands of conservation, we have found, are a great deal more complex than our grandparents ever imagined. When Steve Mather became the first director of the National Park Service in 1916, he ordered the killing of wolves, coyotes, and mountain lions so that deer and elk would flourish. Today we know that such predators are essential to healthy animal populations, and we value them: witness the equilibrium that has been struck between wolves and moose on Isle Royale.

There have been successes. Bison were almost extinct until a breeding program in Yellowstone brought them back. The graceful white trumpeter swans were saved by the protection given in Grand Teton and Yellowstone. Prairie dogs, which cattlemen had poisoned by the millions, dig their towns again beneath the grasslands of Badlands, Theodore Roosevelt, and Wind Cave, and badgers once more prowl after them. Roosevelt elk survive because of Olympic National Park, and Denali is a refuge for Dall sheep. Most of Shenandoah's deer and descendants of those brought in after hunters had eliminated the native population.

When natural fires were regularly extinguished, the sequoia groves of California became choked with small trees. Elsewhere, forests of lodgepole pines, dependent on fire for the release of seeds, began dying out. Today's solution is to let natural fires burn so that forests may renew themselves in the way nature intended.

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