Pilgrimage to the National Parks : Religion and Nature in the United States [1 ed.] 9781136207266, 9780415893800

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Pilgrimage to the National Parks

Routledge Studies in Religion, Travel, and Tourism

1 Pilgrimage to the National Parks Religion and Nature in the United States Lynn Ross-Bryant

Pilgrimage to the National Parks Religion and Nature in the United States Lynn Ross-Bryant

NEW YORK

LONDON

First published 2013 by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Simultaneously published in the UK by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2013 Taylor & Francis The right of Lynn Ross-Bryant to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Ross-Bryant, Lynn. Pilgrimage to the national parks : religion and nature in the United States / by Lynn Ross-Bryant. p. cm. — (Routledge studies in religion, travel, and tourism ; 1) Includes bibliographical references (p. 281) and index. 1. National parks and reserves—Social aspects—United States—History. 2. National parks and reserves—West (U.S.)— History. 3. Nature—Religious aspects—History. 4. Pilgrims and pilgrimages—United States—History. 5. Wilderness areas—United States—History. 6. Sacred space—United States— History. 7. National characteristics, American—History. I. Title. SB482.A4R67 2012 363.6'80978—dc23 2012012865 ISBN13: 978-0-415-89380-0 (hbk) ISBN13: 978-0-203-09446-4 (ebk) Typeset in Sabon by IBT Global.

For Elliott

Contents

List of Figures Foreword Acknowledgments Introduction: Our National Parks Religion The Nature of Nature Pilgrimage and Tourism Myth and Ritual Contestation and Heterogeneity Storied Sacred Space The Evolution of the National Parks as Pilgrimage Sites America’s Best Idea

xi xiii xvii 1 3 4 6 7 10 12 14 16

PART I The New World

1

Introduction to Part I: America Comes of Age

21

Yosemite: New World Sublimity

26

The Newness of the New World The American Experience in Yosemite The Art of Perception Preserved for the People

2

The Dream of Yellowstone: Progress in the Pristine Land Wonderland The Tools of Art and Science in the Construction of Yellowstone Civilizing Nature Nature and Technology

27 30 37 45

50 52 56 61 67

viii Contents

PART II Wilderness and Beyond

3

Introduction to Part II: The Age of Anxiety

73

Seeing America in Grand Canyon and Glacier National Parks

79

Creating the “Titan of Chasms” Living Ruins The Great Unknown Pilgrimage to the Shrine of the Ages

Preservation and Conquest in Glacier National Park Reenacting the Strenuuous Life Construction of a Frontier Park The Glacier Pilgrimage Indians and the National Parks

4

The National Park Idea Prelude to the Establishment of the National Park Service Selling the National Park Idea A Second Origin Story Automobile Pilgrimage—An Alternative Narrative Rituals of the Pilgrimage: America around the Campfi re

79 81 90 95

101 102 105 110 112

116 116 122 128 131 135

PART III Competing Constructions of Wilderness

5

Introduction to Part III: Competing Constructions of Wilderness

149

Mythic and Scientific America

153

“Laboratory Out-of-doors” Emergence of Alternative Narratives The Culmination of the Mather-Albright Tradition Change and Tradition in the Parks Preservation “for the People”

6

The Wilderness Idea Wilderness Beginnings Mythic America: Wilderness as Eden and the Frontier Ansel Adams’ Photography and the Religion of Nature Rethinking Nature and Humans

153 158 160 165 170

175 175 180 188 193

Contents 7

Unbounded Possibilities Reconceptualization of Space A New Role for Science Imagining Ecosystems Alaska: Inhabited Wilderness Reimagining Nature and Culture

Epilogue: Pilgrimage and the Future of the National Parks Change in Paradise The Dynamics of Change A Vision for the Future Pilgrimage in the Gaps

Notes Bibliography Index

ix 195 197 198 201 209 217

224 225 226 232 235

251 281 297

Figures

0.1 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 3.6 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 5.1 5.2 6.1

Winter, Yosemite National Park, 2007. Yo-Semite Falls, 1855. Yosemite Valley from Glacier Point, 1874. The Rocky Mountains, Lander Peak, 1863. Looking Down Yosemite Valley, California, 1865. Grisley Giant, 1861. Castle Geyser, Upper Geyser Basin, 1873. Hot Spring Basin and Crater of the Castle, 1871. Traditional view of Old Faithful Inn, 1912. Interior of Old Faithful Inn. Geyser Hill, Upper Geyser Basin, 1977. “Gee! We are going to see real, live Indians,” 1929. Native Artisans Demonstrate at Hopi House, 1910. “Native Roof Garden Party,” Potter Nampeyo and family members, 1905. Harvey Girls at Grand Canyon. Lobby, Glacier Park Hotel, 1920s. Glacier Park Hotel. Cars lined up for more than 1/2 mile waiting for a chance to get a permit, Yosemite, 1927. Camping in Yosemite Valley, 1927. Camp Curry’s Fire Fall. Ranger Enid Michael dancing with bear, Yosemite, 1920. Field Day, mounted and double mounted, 1929. Dr. Harold C. Bryant conducting nature walk in Yosemite Valley, 1920. Squire Bracebridge (Don Tressider) and the Peacock Pie, 1934. Stehekin River Forest, Northern Cascades, Washington, 1958.

17 31 34 39 40 44 57 58 65 66 69 86 87 88 100 108 110 132 134 138 140 142 154 173 190

xii Figures 6.2 Child in Mountain Meadow, Yosemite National Park, California, 1941. 8.1 Clearing Winter Storm, Yosemite National Park, California, 1940. 8.2 Clearing Autumn Smoke, Controlled Burn, 2002. 8.3 African American Cavalry, Yosemite, 1899. 8.4 Evening Glow of Yosemite Waterfall, Yosemite National Park, no. 23 of the World Landscape Series, 1930. 8.5 Woman at Inspiration Point, 1980. 8.6 One-and-a-Half Domes, Yosemite National Park, 1976.

191 236 237 239 240 243 244

Foreword

Philanthropic public service takes a variety of forms. Some people gather supplies for food banks, spend a weekend in open space as volunteer trailbuilders, or serve as members of commissions and task forces in local government. In a pattern well worth amending, comparatively few scholarly works earn a place in this admirable category of philanthropic enterprise. Although it is a significant scholarly work, Pilgrimage to the National Parks: Religion and Nature in the United States also lands solidly in the category of charitable contribution to the world’s well-being. Lynn Ross-Bryant’s contribution rests on her strenuous labors in reading, analyzing, and interpreting a vast collection of books, articles, and documents. If we could not benefit from her Herculean exertions, those of us who are interested in public lands—and in the whole conundrum of how humans and nature are to share the planet—would be bobbing in an area of thought and expertise that is in constant flood-stage. Synthesizing an enormous domain of literature, navigating with nimbleness through a range of disciplines, directing us to examples and case studies that orient and guide us, Ross-Bryant performs a lasting act of public service, operating in a manner rather like a rafting guide in keeping us from capsizing and sinking under complexity. With this particular guide, there is amusement as well as serious analysis in this intellectual outing, with the amusement often delivered by artfully selected quotations and illustrative details. If we must live with the sorrow of having been born too late to attend the performances staged by Garnet Holme, “Pageant Master for the National Park Service in the Late 1920s,” we can at least have the latter-day pleasure of reading Ross-Bryant’s summary of his Yellowstone pageant, “Sanctuary”: “The second part was an allegory in which Uncle Sam [is] persuaded by nature, wild animals, and trees to declare that the Land would be for the Common Good. The geysers dance (in the form of fair maidens) and real bears and birds are brought in to witness the dance.” The dancing geysers bring to mind an experience recounted by the distinguished environmental historian William deBuys. On his own pilgrimage through the geyser basin in Yellowstone and toward middle age, he encountered a pair of international visitors, a father and son, with distinctive accents. “Daddy,” the little

xiv Foreword boy said to his father, in a remark that deBuys found himself taking personally, “this is a wonderful visit. I would like to see more of these geezers.” Just as important for the cause of public service, Ross-Bryant brings to all of her undertakings a distinctive equanimity, tranquility, and grace of spirit. When the subject is the national parks, these virtues are of heightened value. Even though their supporters have sometimes represented national parks as places remote from human strife, the parks have also been battlegrounds, sometimes—as with the displacement of Indian people—in the most literal sense. More often, the weapons of battle have been lawsuits and legislation, statements of policy and countering statements of dismay and protest. Because Ross-Bryant’s opening premise is that the parks have, from their origins, been sites of contest among confl icting values, she is never caught by surprise or undone by the intensity of feeling that their management and use can arouse. “Economic and political contestations are central to the parks’ existence,” she declares in the Introduction. As Ross-Bryant makes her persuasive case for recognizing that seemingly secular attitudes and convictions have many of the qualities of religious belief, readers will fi nd themselves thinking, “That would explain why people have sometimes fought as if their very souls were at stake in these matters!” In truth, their souls were and are at stake. For every human being, in a point made lightly but poignantly by William deBuys’ story of his encounter among the Yellowstone geysers, every hour of every day registers as one step and station in the pilgrimage moving from birth to death. When a person undertakes a purposeful trip to a national park, a site widely understood to carry an especially forceful charge of value and meaning, that pilgrimage is a microcosm of the traveler’s larger journey through time. In this book, RossBryant harvests the stories and reflections that came into being through hundreds of these journeys. Readers who travel with her will find that they move toward an intellectual destination where seemingly opposite qualities turn out to be neighbors living together in the national parks and, as Ross-Bryant argues near the end of the book, in adjacent areas separated from the parks only by permeable, easily crossed boundaries and jurisdictions. The book itself follows the path of a journey, delivering readers to a conclusion that charts a path to a future in which tradition and change, rather than being pitted against each other, forge an alliance on behalf of both human and natural well-being. Rejecting the temptation (which many other commentators have found impossible to resist!) to lament the muddles and disappointments of decades of park management, with special sorrow reserved for the regrettable division of human beings and nature into two quarantined categories, Ross-Bryant instead sends the reader off with this valedictory: “What might be imagined through the national parks is mutuality, not only of humans, but also of the natural world of which humans are a part.” Reading this book brought to mind another American utopian myth, one in which I am myself a believer. Democracy, this myth promises,

Foreword

xv

permits people of strong, seemingly opposed opinions, opinions that defi ne good and evil in stark terms, to speak and listen to each other; they can then deliberate on and choose courses of action that serve a common cause. The early years of the twenty-fi rst century have not been offering much validation for this bedrock myth of democracy. With comparatively few scholars showing the bravery and persistence that synthesis requires, scholarly specialization and fragmentation now make an uncomfortably close match to the contention and divisiveness of interest groups and splintered cohorts of advocacy. And yet the coexistence of confl ict and cooperation in democracy can be and has been—not a fantasy or pipe dream—but a realized ideal. With thinkers like Lynn Ross-Bryant to guide us through the contested terrain of the past and present, that ideal moves into our reach. Patricia Nelson Limerick Faculty Director, Center of the American West University of Colorado, Boulder

Acknowledgments

My decade-long journey through both the physical terrain and the history and meanings of the national parks would not have been possible without the wisdom and assistance of many people. Thanks fi rst to my parents, Kenny and Carol, who initiated me and my sister Gloria into the wonders of national parks at an early age; and next to my husband Elliott and son Marko, with whom I’ve explored the parks I write about in this book, and to my daughter-in-law Jessica who joined us for the Alaskan adventure. I’m most grateful to Elliott, who spent long hours hiking trails, while I explored the archives of countless parks. Most helpful for understanding the values and beliefs found in the parks, which I saw changing through the decade, were the rangers I heard at campfi re programs, interviewed, or who helped me in libraries and archives both in the parks and at the Denver Service Center. Here is an incomplete list of these helpful people: Rocky Mountain: Judy Visty, the late Ferrel Atkins, Janet Robertson, the late Randy Jones, Vaughn Baker, Larry Frederick. Glacier: Joe Decker, Scott Gediman, Deirdre Shaw. Grand Canyon: Judy Hellmich. Grand Teton: Mike Nicklas, Rich Vedorcheck, Tom Laney, Christine Smith, Martha Williamson. Yellowstone: Judy Knuthfolts, Harold Housley, Paul Schullery, Rich Jehle, Katy Duff y. Alaskan parks: Blanca Stransky, Smitty Parratt, Susan Martin. Denver Service Center: Carol Simpson, Catherine Kisluk, and other librarians and archivists. Thanks also to Dave and Janet Panebaker, who served in many of these parks; John Winsor, Mike Clark, and Ed Lewis of the Greater Yellowstone Coalition; and Richard Sellars, park historian. I am also grateful to The Center of the American West and Patty Limerick at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and to the Religious Studies Department there, for their support and inspiration. I am appreciative of Richard Sellars and Ted Catton for reading parts of the manuscript and Elliott Ross-Bryant for his fi ne, unrelenting editorial skills. Thanks to the Center for the Study of Religion and American Culture and the University of California Press for allowing me to use portions of the article I published with them: “Sacred Sites: Nature and Nation in the U.S. National Parks,” Religion and American Culture vol. 15, no. 1

xviii

Acknowledgments

(Winter 2005): 31–62, ©2005 and to the editors at Routledge for their help and support. And thanks to those incredible places that continue to inspire and challenge me. Lynn Ross-Bryant Steamboat Springs, Colorado February, 2012

Introduction Our National Parks

The Campfi re Pageant, an important ritual in America’s public religion,1 was fi rst celebrated in 1922, fifty years after Yellowstone was established as the fi rst national park and it continued to be celebrated into the 1960s. An elaborate pageant reenacted the 1870 Washburn-Doan expedition’s exploration of the Yellowstone area. In one version these leading citizens of Wyoming and the Montana territory sat around the campfire one evening, thinking of all the wonders they had seen and the experiences of the sublime that had overwhelmed them. And then their conversation turned, as one might expect of enterprising nineteenth-century community leaders, to considering the profit that might be made by making this land of wonders a tourist attraction. One of them asserted that a region of this grandeur should be set aside for all the people and managed by their government. Although one fellow protested that this sounded like socialism, the others all agreed, and thus was born, according to the story, the idea of the national parks. The play ended, “There is nothing more American than the term ‘Our National Parks.’”2 This origin story of the national parks lost favor in the 1960s because of a contestation over some of the facts that were asserted in it;3 but from a perspective that seeks to understand the religious dimensions of the park idea and experience, it is quite clear that the actual verifiability of the facts is less important than what it tells us about what the Park stood for, the symbolic power it had for the American public. Even the contestation is an important part of the story we are exploring. One reason national parks are so American is because the idea of nature has played a central role in U.S. politics, religion, and culture.4 Nature is a powerful symbol that recurs in many of the stories Americans tell about themselves and their country, stories of the feared wilderness or the challenging frontier; of bountiful agricultural land or treacherous mountains and deserts. Nature is the site of religious experience of God and of demonic temptations and dangers. It is the New World and the Promised Land, as well as the untamed wilderness full of “wild beasts and wild men.” Nature, imagined in these many ways, has been a central image around which important issues, dreams, and violence have gathered in U.S. American history and particularly in its religious history. 5

2

Pilgrimage to the National Parks

As if to call attention to the central place nature holds in American culture and to present it in a form that could be identified with the nation and honored by the citizenry, the United States was the fi rst nation to designate a piece of land a national park. As the promise of the New World in the early travel literature was to create a new people, the parks came to be seen as a place for rejuvenation and re-creation. As the religion of the Republic asserted that the Creator had fashioned this place and called the American people to a special mission, the parks became the embodiment of this sacred space and destiny. Director of the National Park Service Stephen Mather said in his 1921 Annual Report, “Better men and women will result from their visits to the great open breathing spaces.” Roger Toll stated in his 1926 Rocky Mountain National Park Superintendent’s Report, “From nature can be learned the scheme of creation and the handiwork of the Great Architect as from no other source.” In recent times, following September 11, 2001, Secretary of the Interior Gale Norton waived park entrance fees over Veterans Day weekend, to allow Americans the opportunity to seek solace and inspiration from the Nation’s parks. . . . It’s tragedies like this that make healing necessary so we can recover and rebound. What better places to begin that healing process than in our parks, where Americans can draw strength from national icons of freedom and peace from splendors of nature . . . and reconnect with the values that have made this nation great.6 Thus, the national parks have been closely linked to the ideals of the nation and presented as emblematic of primordial America, preserved unchanged within their boundaries. Quite unintentionally, the national park concept also carries with it many of the tensions and contradictions that are present in these ideals, including the meanings of mythic nature at the heart of America. The national park is nature that has been made culture, while claiming to be pure nature. It is nature that has been declared to be timeless, while humans labor to hold back the work of time. It is nature that, as wilderness, is the embodiment of archetypal America—the same country that stands proudly for progress and technological development and for the conquest of wilderness in the name of civilization. Because the parks present us with nature set apart in a boundaried space, they provide the opportunity to explore these many visions of nature in the U.S. Through uncovering in the parks’ history and development a myriad of competing voices, embodied in the place, the people, the images and artifacts, we will tease out some of the threads that are woven together in Americans’ love affair with nature. To examine the stories of nature and the different ways these stories have been told as the parks have developed is to learn a great deal about what values and beliefs have been worth fighting over and about the various ways humans have imagined nature and understood themselves in relation—or opposition—to it. Such stories are

Introduction

3

the stuff religion is made of. They are the orienting beacons people use to fi nd—or place—themselves in a meaningful world. Considering parks as sacred places which allow or enable such reflections to take place, even as pilgrimage sites do, will help make sense of the staying power certain images of nature have had, what the on-the-ground consequences of these images have been, and why the contradictions and tensions between these visions related to nature usually pass unnoticed in our national conversation. Before bringing these questions to the sacred spaces of America’s national parks, this chapter will lay the groundwork, exploring terms such as religion, nature, pilgrimage and tourism, myth and ritual, contestation, and sacred space. The chapter will conclude with an overview of the historical development of these ideas in the parks and a brief look at how Ken Burns’ 2009 film on the national parks fits the themes of this study.

RELIGION Using the language of religion in relation to national parks is appropriate if religion is understood to include more than traditional institutions. Charles Long speaks of religion as “orientation . . . , how one comes to terms with the ultimate significance of one’s place in the world.”7 Thomas Tweed argues that “Religions are cultural processes whereby individuals and groups map, construct, and inhabit worlds of meaning. . . . Mapping a symbolic landscape and constructing a symbolic dwelling involve negotiations for meaning and power in natural environments and at social sites.”8 Significantly, for our purposes, place is integral to both defi nitions. Place, and particularly the place of nature, is the focus of Catherine Albanese’s work, Nature Religion in America. She follows Long in focusing on religion as “orientation” and sees in the history of Western culture three primary symbolic centers which have oriented people: God, humanity, and nature. She uses the term “nature religion” “for a symbolic center and the cluster of beliefs, behaviors, and values that encircles it. . . . It is a useful construct . . . because it throws light on certain aspects of our history that we have only haphazardly seen—or even failed to see—religiously.”9 Clifford Geertz understands religious symbols as providing the connection between world view and ethos, which is useful in thinking about the beliefs and values that are expressed symbolically in the parks.10 Although these terms can be used in rather disembodied ways, if symbol is understood dynamically and contextually, and as ritual event enacted by a community, the model can include an awareness of place. The parks provide a public space for such enactments. Keeping in mind the dynamic context of symbols will also help avoid a univocal reading and will inevitably bring in the multiple voices, contestations, and ambiguities that are part of any lived religion. Thus, we can describe religion as the process of orienting self in community and world, establishing through negotiation how a community

4

Pilgrimage to the National Parks

lives together in light of a larger purpose or meaning. The goal of such a defi nition is to offer a way of studying religion that moves beyond institutions and fi nds religion in the expressions of meaning and value that weave through a culture. “Religion of everyday life” or “lived religion” will always be situated or contextualized, will always be dynamic, and will never be without ambiguities.11 This study of nature in the U.S. as viewed through the history and development of the national parks will use these various approaches to explore further the territory that Albanese has set out, with the intention of broadening our understanding of American religion and culture and deepening understanding of the implications of the ways we construct nature. We will look at the national parks as sacred spaces—spaces set apart—where the many and conflicting stories of the culture are embodied and performed. They are places of play, places where the normal boundaries are lifted, where people can explore nature outside the parameters culture sets and play with confl icting ideals of the culture. Sam Gill describes play as a place of flexibility where there is “play” to try on new ways of being, experience the self and other selves in a new way and, in this case, to rethink and “replay” one’s place in nature.12 Exploring the creative tensions of this play world will open a broader perspective on ideals and values related to nature and what these show about the religious dimensions of American culture. Before turning to pilgrimage to the national parks it is fi rst necessary to consider what we mean by nature. Key to this approach is the understanding that nature, the symbol around which all this turns, does not refer to an objective reality, but is our way of imagining or constructing, of putting together our world into a meaning and value-filled frame. The different ways nature has been constructed, which all grow out of different foundational beliefs and values, have shaped the ways the parks have developed.

THE NATURE OF NATURE William Cronon’s essay, “The Trouble With Wilderness,” reminds us that the way we conceive of nature is exactly that: our conception, our construction.13 Nature is not something out there, but a way of seeing, of giving boundaries to our world, which grows out of our world view and shapes our ways of acting in the world. Of course there is a reality out there that we have placed boundaries around in certain ways and labeled. The problems arise when we do not recognize our labels as labels and thereby are unable to see the consequences they entail. The dilemma stems from what A.N. Whitehead called the “fallacy of misplaced concreteness,”14 an Enlightenment habit of mind that encourages us to label as reality the abstractions our minds have constructed. It is hard for us to see that nature and wilderness are not objects existing out there, but constructs that organize human perception of the environment. Clearly not all

Introduction

5

cultures see nature in the same way. Native American cultures, for example, generally do not make the separation between nature, humans, and other animals that has characterized Judeo-Christian cultures. Within European cultures, Samuel Johnson in the eighteenth century noted the Pyrenees were “‘not so high and hideous as the Alps,’” but nonetheless were “‘uncouth, huge, monstrous excrescences of Nature, bearing nothing but craggy stones.’”15 In the United States it was some time after the Southwest was discovered by the Santa Fe Railroad that there was any interest in the Grand Canyon as a tourist attraction. Anthropologist Richard Burton described it in the 1860s as an ugly gash in a desolate landscape, a view Clarence Dutton acknowledged as he reported on his expedition with J.W. Powell that many “would enter this strange region with a shock, and dwell there for a time with a sense of oppression, and perhaps with horror.” Only with time would one “acquire” the “meaning and spirit of that marvelous scenery.”16 If nature is not something out there, but is intimately entangled with the beliefs and values of our culture, something we learn to see in a certain way, then we have the opportunity and the responsibility to consider the entailments that flow from our constructs of nature and wilderness. Central to the trouble with the way we have constructed wilderness, according to Cronon, is the requirement that nature as wilderness (which seems to be the authentic form of nature) be separate from humans.17 Richard White confirms this problem by noting the tendency to think that human labor cannot exist with wilderness, but is, in fact, what destroys wilderness.18 Thus there is no way authentic human existence can coincide with authentic nature existence. Certainly the very idea of a national park, nature set apart and valued for its pristine, unpeopled splendors, is open to Cronon’s critique. These constructions of nature result in tensions and contradictions embodied in the very idea of the national parks. For example, the mandate to preserve the land, unchanged, so the people can enjoy it inevitably leads to conflicts over use versus preservation. A later formulation was to maintain the land as it was before the coming of the white man—which is impossible if the white man is allowed in. In addition, if it were preserved as before the white man, it would have Native Americans living in it and, unfailingly, the indigenous people were expelled as various western lands were designated national parks, although they were later brought back in many as an exhibit or entertainment. Further, what does it mean to “preserve” nature? The language of museum and exhibit is used, which suggests that nature is frozen in time and put on display. Certainly this fits our American story—that the parks are the embodiment of America as it was in the beginnings, in an eternal realm outside of history, not subject to change. The rhetoric of the parks tells us that to enter into a park is to leave behind what humans have created and place ourselves in the natural pristine world. From the long line at the gate where one pays to enter, to the restaurants and comfort stations—in some more elaborate, in some more rustic—to the souvenir shops or excursions provided by concessionaires, to

6

Pilgrimage to the National Parks

the well-kept trails and often boardwalks, to the interpretation programs, usually in large concrete amphitheaters—it should be obvious that this is not nature untouched by humans. Within this context, including the tensions and contradictions, the construction of the national parks—as concept and as set apart space—took shape. In this process the boundaried space came to be understood as sacred space and the parks emerged as national pilgrimage sites.

PILGRIMAGE AND TOURISM In 1851 Euro-Americans happened upon Yosemite Valley while pursuing the Ahwahneechee Native Americans who made the Valley their seasonal home. Within five years entrepreneur James Mason Hutchings organized an expedition into the Valley and published Hutchings’ California Magazine to advertise the place with waterfall drawings by Thomas Ayres. His description of that fi rst view of the Valley invited others to join him in the sacred mystery of the place: “The inapprehensible, the uninterpretable profound, was at last opened up before us . . . drawing us nearer to the Infi nite One.”19 The mystery of the Valley was soon piquing the curiosity of people from the East Coast and Hutchings was leading tours to the “new heaven and new earth.” As John Sears notes in Sacred Places, “The raw material of nature was rapidly transformed into a cultural commodity.”20 Trails were built, a toll road opened, and hotels and “bed and breakfasts” soon dotted the Valley. Clearly this is tourism, an important phenomenon in American culture from the nineteenth century to the present, but the use of religious language and the fervor with which people responded also connect this journey to what is studied as pilgrimage. Both tourism and pilgrimage studies have broadened in recent years, creating the possibility of looking at them together. First, tourism had to be accepted as a legitimate area of study. “Previously, anthropologists have had a tendency to deprecate ‘tourist’ objects and performances, but . . . an anthropology of experience may well have to take these forms more seriously.”21 Whereas some dismiss tourism as reflecting the shallowness and consumer orientation of contemporary society and devoid of any “deeper spiritual or cultural significance,” others have examined tourism as “the pilgrimage of modern times,” blurring the boundary between the two and inviting an exploration of their connections. 22 Pilgrimage and tourism are permeable experiences. Pilgrimage has always included “seeing the sights” as well as worrying about fi nding the next bed and breakfast. And tourism frequently involves a search for personal transformation through the experiencing with others of a special site that represents central values and beliefs of the group. In both cases, the focus is on travel away from home to a special place that is set apart from daily life. Within this boundaried space, the pilgrims visit sites that have

Introduction

7

been identified as places of power, often with a leader trained in the mysteries of the place; and the response of the community is often shared feelings of reverence or awe. The expectation is that there will be some kind of transformation or re-creation as a result of the visit and relics or souvenirs from the holy place serve as talismans of the power of the place and experience after the pilgrims return home. Alan Morinis argues that the power of pilgrimage sites rests in their serving as the “repositories of collective ideals.” Bringing together pilgrimage and tourism, he says, “Considering the pilgrimage center as a place where cultural ideals (rather than gods alone) are enshrined permits secular journeys to fall within” the category. 23 This certainly applies to national parks, although the distinction between secular and sacred journeys fades if we use the earlier defi nition of religion as “orientation.” A shrine, then, including a national park, provides a physical location that embodies the values that orient the culture; and travel to the location both literally and symbolically orients the pilgrim.

MYTH AND RITUAL The pilgrimage process is made up of myths and rituals that tell and enact the stories of orientation that are embedded in the sacred site. Myths are a form of discourse that narrate the paradigmatic truths of a people, articulating the values and beliefs of the society and unifying the community around them, powerfully promoting “social cohesion and sentiments of common belonging.”24 The stories of the pilgrimage site give expression to the stories of the people, providing at one level the ritual retelling of their unity. These fundamental narratives have sometimes been seen as presenting the timeless truths of a people—archaic, ancestral (or archetypal) knowledge that has been passed down and constitutes the foundations of the culture. In this mode of analysis, myth is “acutely conservative,” conveying “historical, cultural, and practical knowledge while also guarding a Volk’s distinctive values—and errors—against forgetfulness and change.”25 Morinis adds that pilgrimage in particular “is usually a conservative force that reinforces the existing social order. 26 In the mythology of the national parks the primordial values that dominate are connected to both nature and nation; together they tell a story that unifies the pilgrims with each other and with the larger community (America). Nature—whether as a “pleasuring ground for the people” or as “it was before the advent of white man”27—is the center of the shrine. But nature as it is constructed here is mythically connected with nation. If we approach this mythic narrative as timeless truth, it might be put this way: The people to whom this land was given in trust were chosen by God to be the creators of a great nation founded on democracy. The national parks preserve the grandeur of the primordial land as it was first given to

8

Pilgrimage to the National Parks the people and they are a testament to those who made this exceptional nation the democracy it is and to those who brought progress to the primordial land to make the U.S. a powerful and prosperous nation.

Although progress is stressed in this story and the heritage is seen to continue to the present, there is still nostalgia for the “great times” of the founding of the nation and the conquering of the frontier. The parks enshrine these times of origin and their accompanying values. To visit the shrine is to reaffi rm and be rejuvenated by these eternal values. This story can be said to characterize elements of America’s mythic narrative, as well as the story that is found in the national parks. However, myth becomes a useful model for studying these narratives only when the intricacies of the structure of the stories and of the historical realities in which the stories are told are taken into account, that is, when they are not approached as timeless. To assume an essential story of a people that applies to all for all time is to miss the power of myth to reveal the dynamics of a particular cultural group. These dynamics include the power relations that are present in all social interactions. Because myths claim “both credibility and authority”28 they have significant power in establishing order in society. The stories that legitimate certain values and beliefs inevitably privilege some in the society over others, as, in telling the story of the culture, a hierarchical order is established and naturalized. Myths, then, can appear as hegemonic power structures whose function is to impose and preserve the power of one group over another. In terms of national parks, this could be seen as a Euro-American group, white and upper class (the only ones who could afford to visit the parks at fi rst—and even now class continues to play an important role in who visits) reading themselves into the myth of a people chosen by God and given this exceptional land to match their exceptional character. The parks would be seen as emblematic of the great American achievement of democracy, while not seeing those who were, very undemocratically, left out of their story. Although this approach is helpful as it takes account of the power relations within any society, it loses its dynamism if the intent is simply to unmask the hegemonic system. Victor Turner’s work leads to a more dynamic approach by shifting the focus from myth as a timeless expression or a hegemonic imposition to the engagement of the community within the sacred place. His concepts of liminality, anti-structure, and communitas open ways of studying pilgrimage as processes of change and transformation, and the possibility that the results of the pilgrimage experience could result in a re-envisioning rather than simply reaffirmation of social structure. “A limen is . . . a ‘threshold’. . . . A pilgrimage center, from the standpoint of the believing actor, also represents a threshold, a place and moment ‘in and out of time’” where transforming experiences might occur. In this liminal time and place, “betwixt and between,” anti-structure is created as ordinary social structures are set

Introduction

9

aside, often overturned, so the equalitarian experience of communitas can occur. Turner sees “communitas,” by which he means “a total, unmediated relationship between person and person,” as key to the transformation that occurs in pilgrimage. Pilgrimage is no longer seen as simply reinforcing the old order. Rather it “puts all social structural rules in question and suggests new possibilities.”29 How useful is it to apply Turner’s ideas of communitas and liminality to the park experience? Although the park experience of awe before magnificent nature is often couched in solitary terms, it is also true that from the fi rst it has been communal, so the experience of solitude seems to occur with others. Turner describes communitas as a “community of authentic individuals.” “In this kind of thinking, too, the health and integrality of the individual is indissoluble from the peace and harmony of the community; solitude and society cease to be antithetical.”30 Communitas is a relationship between concrete, historical, idiosyncratic individuals. The centrality of the community is seen in the parks, for example, in the paradigmatic campfi re ceremony, where the park ranger officiant draws together people who were strangers before and celebrates with them the mythic narrative and sacred power of the place. The shared experience of the grandeur of the awe-inspiring sacred sites on which the shrine is founded, again often led by the ranger, is another example. Indeed, it may be in such moments that we can fi nd some connections between the park experience and the transformative experience Turner calls communitas. What about the liminal antistructure that Turner sees as the setting in which communitas can occur? To describe the park experience as liminal anti-structure may seem extreme, but the national park is, at least, a place set apart from ordinary life to which the traveler comes leaving aside many of the structures of daily life. On another level, the normative structures of capitalist America are, to some extent, suspended, as this is land claimed to be not available for development or profit. The customary hierarchy of humans over nature is likewise muted, if not called into question. The relationship to nature as a startling new form of other-than-human communitas is often presented as cause for the transformation. The rapture of sublime scenery as experienced in the parks in the nineteenth century provides one access to experiencing transformation through a new relationship to nature; in the twenty-fi rst century the experience of being part of the community of Gaia is another. At certain points in park history relationship with non-human animals has been central. The accepted structure of human authority over and superiority to animals gives way as, in the early twentieth century, the Northern Pacific Railroad’s brochure invited travelers to enter the Animal Kingdom of Yellowstone where elk and deer and even bears knew humans did not intend harm and they were therefore not dangerous to humans. Although the message now is to respect animals and keep your distance, there is still the hope of the transformative experience of feeling a shared kinship.

10

Pilgrimage to the National Parks

Perhaps all of this enables the bonds of communitas that Turner described, that are “undifferentiated, equalitarian, direct, extent, nonrational existential, I-Thou . . . relationships.”31 However, this imagined ideal harmony of a liminal communitas limits our understanding of pilgrimage, just as the assumption of timeless ideals of the mythic narrative does. No society is without factions. As Bruce Lincoln argues, “social integration benefits some segments of society considerably more than others.”32 The claim of unity simply means that some voices are being ignored.

CONTESTATION AND HETEROGENEITY Contemporary studies of pilgrimage pay attention to the confl icting and varied voices at pilgrimage sites. They stress that the ideals and values the shrine represents are not simply honored at the site; they are also contested and negotiated by various groups, both in and out of power. There is also the recognition that this heterogeneity includes religion itself. Religion is not the exclusive province of any sacred site, but is always intermingled with social, political, theological, and economic power structures. This perspective on pilgrimage acknowledges that social processes are always complex. Rather than an image of a homogeneous group of pilgrims traveling to the sacred center to affi rm the timeless ideals of the culture, we have diversity of people, of their goals, of the ideals promoted by the shrine. Because of the high value placed on sacred sites and the power attributed to them, the coming together of this diversity often results in contestation. John Eade and Michael Sallnow title their collection of essays on Christian pilgrimage Contesting the Sacred and stress pilgrimage is above all an arena for competing religious and secular discourses, for both the official co-optation and the non-official recovery of religious meanings, for conflict between orthodoxies, sects, and confessional groups, for drives towards consensus and communitas and for counter-movements towards separateness and division. The essential heterogeneity of the pilgrimage process, which was marginalized or suppressed in the earlier, deterministic models of both the correspondence theorists and those who adopted a Turnerian paradigm, is here pushed center-stage, rendered problematic.33 Discussing sacred space rather than pilgrimage, David Chidester and Edward Linenthal make a similar point. Arguing against Mircea Eliade’s understanding of sacred space as distinct from profane space, they assert, “Against all the efforts of religious actors, sacred space is inevitably entangled with the entrepreneurial, the social, the political, and other ‘profane’ forces. . . . Sacred space anchors more than merely myth or emotion. It anchors relations of meaning and power that are at stake in the formation

Introduction

11

of a larger social reality.”34 Attention to these heterogeneous elements that are a part of any pilgrimage site, and that cannot be simply unified, allows one to become aware of the various issues and meanings and perspectives that are circulating in the process. It then becomes clear that culture is not as monolithic as it might have seemed. The seemingly homogeneous ideals and values the shrine was said to embody now appear to be heterogeneous and in constant formulation and reformulation. John Bodnar puts some form on this heterogeneity by distinguishing between official and vernacular discourses as elements that go into shaping public memory, both told and enacted. “Public memory,” he says, “emerges from the intersection of official and vernacular cultural expressions.” Official culture has as its aim the reinforcement of “social unity, continuity of existing institutions, and loyalty to the status quo.” Vernacular culture, on the other hand, expresses “what social reality feels like rather than what it should be like” and so “threatens the sacred and timeless nature of official expressions.” Bodnar’s description of “public memory” combines the political with “fundamental issues about the entire existence of a society. . . . It is an argument about the interpretation of reality.” Asserting that “public memory could be simultaneously multivocal and hegemonic,” Bodnar says the interplay between the vernacular—open, challenging, changing, diverse—and the official—conservative, integrative, self-perpetuating— discourses is at the heart of the formulation of public memory.35 Similarly Bruce Lincoln argues that although societal hierarchies “are defended . . . through those discourses that legitimate or mystify their structures, premises, and workings,” discourses can also “disrupt previously persuasive discourses of legitimation . . . [and] are among the most powerful instruments of social change.”36 This view combines the acknowledgement of power and authoritative domination with the recognition of alternative voices that contest the official script. Together they shape public memory, with times when the official dominates and other times when vernacular voices take center stage. Mikhail Bahktin’s understanding of how language works complements this. He imagines two poles of language, one of which works to “unify and centralize the verbal-ideological world”—the “centripetal forces of language.” This is “language conceived as ideologically saturated, language as a world view. . . . Thus a unitary language gives expression to forces working toward concrete verbal and ideological unification and centralization, which develop in vital connection with the processes of sociopolitical and cultural centralization.” This centering language is forever operating “in the midst of heteroglossia,” which would stratify, decentralize, and disunify. These centrifugal forces are also socio-ideological. Like Bodnar, Bahktin sees these forces necessarily operating together, continually playing off each other: “Every concrete utterance of a speaking subject serves as a point where centrifugal as well as centripetal forces are brought to bear.”37 To apply these approaches to a pilgrimage site is to search out the

12

Pilgrimage to the National Parks

different perspectives that together are shaping the site. There is contestation, heterogeneity, and also dialogue. There is little question that parks are places of contestation and heterogeneity, not only between official and vernacular discourses, but within each of these as well. Economic and political contestations are central to the parks’ existence, with scientists, politicians, and park managers adding to the fray; and because park visitors are required for the enterprise to work, their voices cannot be ignored, though the park attempts to shape the visitor experience as at all pilgrimage sites. And, as at all pilgrimage sites, they are not completely successful. Pilgrimage is always threatening to the official, the centripetal, because there is always room for individual choices and experiences which cannot be controlled by authorities, as a religious service might hope to. Other contestations arise out of the very mission of the National Park Service, which is the call to preserve the landscape for the enjoyment of the people. The confl icting values of preservation and promotion require negotiation and at times in the history of the parks this has taken the form of confl ict between the goal of promoting good citizenship by exposing large numbers of visitors to the parks (as well as being a successful enterprise) and the goal of protecting the natural environment from development and tourism. The question of what activities are appropriate to practice in these special places concerns all who manage or visit the parks. Since the end of the twentieth century the contesting poles of parks as playgrounds or as biodiversity reserves have emerged. Neither can live without the other. The contestation and dialogue between them is a spotlight on issues in contemporary culture. The model for studying pilgrimage developed in this section will be useful in getting at the religious dimensions of travel to the national parks. However, an additional element is needed. Although attention to the various voices contesting or dialoguing about the ideas and values the parks exemplify is central to seeing their role in U.S. American culture, attention must also be paid to the bodily, material dimension of the pilgrimage event and the physical context in which it occurs. In particular, the actual physical landscape and the interaction of visitors with it will be central. The discourse surrounding the cultural construction of nature and national parks will be important, but so will nondiscursive elements such as the actual physical space and human bodies and the way they help shape this construction. Ideals and values are more than rational; they have affective, experiential dimensions. To understand pilgrimage to national parks and its expression of central religious and cultural realities, both must be addressed.38

STORIED SACRED SPACE Underlying the mythic stories that have grown up around national parks, as well as the ritual enactments that take place in them, is the space itself.

Introduction

13

Narratives have been created in and about this space—this is the human imaginary—but the imagination takes place in particular environments that shape the stories even as the stories shape human perception of the environment. Pilgrimage to the national parks takes place, and involves the movement of bodies within physical sites.39 Paying attention to this spatial, physical dimension of human being broadens our canvas and gives a new perspective on the whole picture, as we see the interacting environment in which discourse takes place. The environment is not just the setting for the human activities that take place therein, but rather a part of the drama itself.40 Morinis describes the physical environment as one among several different planes that overlap and intersect.41 However, if we imagine what we call physical, cultural, and social to be labels we give to an experienced reality, rather than thinking of planes, we can shift our vision and imagine a label of wholeness that includes them all. Indeed such a label would be closer to our actual experience. Geographer Rob Shields argues for considering the spatial dimensions of human activity because, he says, meaning is located in the world. Refusing the categories of subject-object, perceiver-perceived, he attempts to allow the full, heterogeneous reality of persons-in-environment to be seen. “Environments are participated in, being both an object of reason and a container of the thinking subject who does not so much ‘interact with the whole environment’ as participate in and depend on it. There is tremendous complicity between the body and environment and the two interpenetrate each other.” 42 Social anthropologist Tim Ingold takes on this problematic relationship between subject and object, environment and culture, arguing that “Human beings, like other organisms, are enmeshed within webs of environmental relations.” The question is how to talk about cultural adaptations within such webs. Often culture is seen as an adaptive system attuned to given environmental constraints, and humans are either seen to have no agency or, on the other hand, to inhabit worlds that are themselves culturally constructed, so the environment has no reality. Either way there is no true interaction. His alternative is to say “persons endure through a continuous intercourse with their environments. This intercourse is the life process. . . . [There is a] mutual constitution of persons and environment in this process.” 43 What can be broadly called a phenomenological-hermeneutical approach encourages an appreciation for the varied aspects of human action in the environment and also stresses the lived experience of the participants. Rather than beginning with binaries, which pre-establish frames for experience—sacred/profane, nature/culture, subject/object, individual/community, e.g.—a hermeneutical approach can take account of the many different threads that weave together to make up an experience. This approach also avoids dichotomies that would label some things part of the pilgrimage experience and others outside of it, and thus encourages examination of

14

Pilgrimage to the National Parks

unexpected elements that would otherwise be ignored as irrelevant. Such an approach is another way of getting at the vernacular voice discussed earlier and the transformation of cultural meanings through action. The focus is on the event, rather than its official meaning. As E.M. Brunner argues in The Anthropology of Experience, “It is in the performance of an expression that we re-experience, re-live, re-create, re-tell, re-construct, and re-fashion our culture. The performance does not release a pre-existing meaning that lies dormant in the text. Rather, the performance itself is constitutive.”44 To look for process and change allows us to see developing interactions, including confl icts and new modes of thinking that result. Focus on process also allows us to see the actual physical process of bodily movement within an environment, which is also constantly changing. The goal of this approach is to bring together expression and experience. To Eade and Sallnow’s assertion that “pilgrimage is above all an arena for competing religious and secular discourses,” Morinis asserts that “Social perspectives must be supplemented by appreciation for direct experiences had by pilgrims. Structure and experience are inseparable components of the institution and process of sacred journeying.”45 Adrian Ivakhiv further adds the importance of the physical world to experience. He describes the world of human and nonhuman actions as “a tangled web within which the world is ever being created—shaped and constituted through the imaginative, discursive, spatial, and material practices of humans reflectively immersed within an active and animate, more-than-human world.”46 The representations of a culture grow out of the experiences of its different people in their worlds—both social and physical. Responsively, the way they represent their experiences results in effects on other people and on the environment. These understandings of sacred stories within sacred spaces will be the foundations for studying pilgrimage to American national parks.

THE EVOLUTION OF THE NATIONAL PARKS AS PILGRIMAGE SITES Pilgrimage sites, then, enshrine the values and beliefs of a community and offer the occasion for both honoring and contesting them. The intention of this volume is to explore the negotiation of beliefs and values related to nature and nation in the U.S. from the development of the national parks in the mid-nineteenth century to the fi rst decade of the twenty-fi rst. The parks provide the opportunity to hear many voices, both official and vernacular, as this conversation develops. Some of the issues that are part of the conversation concern the mythology of the American West, the understanding of nature, confl icts between development and preservation, the standing of Native Americans, and the implications of ecological sciences. The focus of this book is on western parks, primarily Yosemite, Yellowstone, Glacier, and Grand Canyon. The argument for removing these lands

Introduction

15

from the possibility of private development was that they were “worthless” for entrepreneurial development and, at the same time, priceless as spectacular scenery. Contrary to the contemporary moment, there was no argument for their importance as biodiversity preserves. Much of the mythic narrative we will look at is intimately connected with their monumentalism. Hence, we will neglect—at least until the fi nal chapter—the more recent additions of parks that lack the original mandate by the Park Service of what would qualify as a national park: “scenery of supreme and distinctive quality or some national feature so extraordinary or unique as to be of national interest and importance.”47 Although this choice on my part plays into the dominant mythic story of the parks that I am arguing is only one piece of the narrative, to show how the story began and developed through these parks is the necessary beginning point. The traditional story is not created by any one individual, group, or power structure. We will look at the roles of artists, explorers, entrepreneurs, politicians, scientists of various kinds from geologists to ecologists, park administrators, and tourists in contributing to the formation of the park narrative. As at all pilgrimage sites, these many voices do not become one unified voice. Even though we will look for the dominant story at particular historical moments, we will also be looking for the other voices that are contesting—and shaping—the way the story develops. Voices will be brought into the conversation that were for the most part ignored— particularly those of the native peoples who inhabited the “uninhabited lands” before they were taken over by the government as parks for (some of) the people. Also to be considered are the nearly silent minorities and lower class that were outside the purview of the mythic story and were seldom seen in the parks. In the fi nal chapter we will explore how these non-dominant voices are playing a more important role in shaping the story and experience of the parks—and we will ask whether this involves a fundamental change in the park story. The mythic narrative of pilgrimage to the national parks will be traced through three historical periods. There are, of course overlaps and outliers—this division is simply a heuristic tool for exploring the historical material as it evolves between 1850 and 2010. Part I, “The New World” begins with the “discovery” of Yosemite Valley by Euro-Americans and goes through the establishment of Yosemite and Yellowstone as national parks, with artists, writers, and entrepreneurs promoting the wonders of the landscapes. Part II, “See America First” looks at three groups who used this phrase in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to promote tourism to the parks. The Santa Fe Railroad and Fred Harvey Company were central in the developing of the mythology and pilgrimage rituals of the Grand Canyon, as was the Great Northern Railroad in Glacier. When the National Park Service was established in 1916 it also used this phrase and the nationalism it implied to increase tourism in the nation’s parks. Part III, “Wilderness and Beyond,” looks at pilgrimage as the development

16

Pilgrimage to the National Parks

of the environmental movement and new scientific understandings of ecological systems created new adversaries and allies and the spiritual meaning of pilgrimage to the parks became a theme. The twenty-fi rst century has seen dramatic changes as ecosystem concepts have been applied to the parks—and these new values often confl ict with the traditional story of national parks. The Epilogue, “Pilgrimage and the Future of the National Parks,” will speculate on the consequences of these unresolved dilemmas, as well as the realities of climate change, for the pilgrimage experience and for the mythic narratives of the United States of America.

AMERICA’S BEST IDEA In 2009 Ken Burns and Dayton Duncan produced a documentary series for PBS titled The National Parks: America’s Best Idea. The twelve-hour film—and the 400-page print version that accompanied it—traces the history of the establishment and development of the National Park System, as well as including interviews with contemporary park and environmental leaders commenting on each stage of development. The fi lm tells the story, with magnificent scenic views and numerous historic photographs, of the National Park Idea. The overall plot of the fi lm is that national parks provide grounding for Americans, and American ideals and values, and this is because of both the magnificent scenery of America and the dedication and perseverance of the many Americans, both famous and ordinary, who enabled this American dream to become a reality. This highly regarded and widely viewed fi lm confi rms the appropriateness of searching out the religious dimensions of national parks—not only in the history of their development, but also in the present time. The language of religion and spirituality—God, pilgrimage, awe, wonder, transformation—are used as plentifully in the film as they were at the time of the discovery of park lands or of their establishment as part of the National Park System.48 Again, as throughout park history, interlaced with this religious language is the language of nation. The spiritual experience which is to be had in the parks is closely interwoven with the greatness of America and American democracy. In many ways, then, what the fi lm presents is the mythic narrative of the parks this volume intends to explore and analyze. We see this traditional story in Ken Burns’ comments on the fi lm that are found in his preface to the book. He says his interest in American history, and particularly the history of the American West, has reached its apotheosis for us in the story of our national parks. For in the narrative of their creation, in the evolution of their clean and stunningly influential ideal, we have been able to engage and join themes that transcend the political or military or social elements that have traditionally passed for American history and have at times, we

Introduction

17

Figure 0.1 Winter, Yosemite National Park, 2007. Photograph by Q.T. Luong. (QTLuong/terragalleria.com, Yose 20020.) This photograph is the cover picture for the Duncan and Burns book version of the film.

believe, touched on or at least glimpsed the intimate, indeed, spiritual themes that bind us—and that complicated past—together. Concerning the connection of the parks and democracy he says, For the fi rst time in human history, land—great sections of our natural landscape—was set aside, not for kings or noblemen or the very rich, but for everyone, for all time. We liked the fact that we Americans had invented such a wonderful thing, that this idea, like our articulation of universal political freedom in the Declaration of Independence, should be so widely admired and copied throughout the world. Finally, he brings in the personal spiritual experience. Describing his fi rst visit to Yosemite, which occurred while making the fi lm, he says, “I had been permitted entry into a new country, not just a country of physical space and time, but of meaning and memory. I felt born again as we walked back into the valley.”49 Burns’ view of the parks is easily related to parks as pilgrimage sites. In the fi lm they serve a mythic function both for individuals and the nation. Time and again the people interviewed talk about going to the parks as “going home.” In this construction of the story, the parks provide the unchanging heart of American ideals and values where

18 Pilgrimage to the National Parks American pilgrims can return and bring their children and their grandchildren to experience once again the beauty and power of American nature. In keeping with this retelling of the traditional narrative of the parks, the fi lm traces the history of the parks up to the 1960s—the beginning of the environmental era, looking beyond this time only briefly by mentioning the development of the new Alaskan parks (designated as national monuments in 1978) and the reintroduction of wolves into Yellowstone in 1995. By basically ending the story in the 1960s, Burns avoids having to deal with the recent challenges to the narrative that this volume explores and which require attention to confl icting values. Although contestation is part of the Burns story of the development of the parks, the right path is easily discerned and taken—with a few exceptions like the Hetch Hetchy dam, from which we learned to guard our parks more diligently. What does not entirely fit the traditional narrative is the fi lm’s presentation of the parks through the lens of democracy. Burns could point to many park advocates through the years who made this connection between the parks and democracy, but making it central adds new dimensions to park history. We see this in his statement that “the story of the parks is the story of the people,” which means his audience learns about the parks through the people who were involved in their creation. These people include Presidents such as the Roosevelts and Park Service founder Stephen Mather, but they also include many individuals who are not famous but who contributed to the establishment of a particular park: democracy at work. In addition, he expands the theme of democracy to include roles people of color have played in the history of the parks, as well as in the present. This is most powerfully seen in the special features that were not part of the PBS series, but came out in the DVD set, particularly “This is America” and “Contemporary Stories from America’s National Parks,” which included Spanish audio and subtitles. This revisioning of the park story in terms of a larger range of Americans than has been part of the very traditional Euro-American narrative is to my mind the most significant contribution of the fi lm. However, the strong emphasis on the traditional mythic narrative of the parks as pristine, unchanging America left me wondering if my conclusions about the parks were too far out of synch with contemporary developments since what I see emerging is an evolution of the ritual and symbolic meanings of the parks, while this fi lm confi rms the staying power of some of the traditional meanings. As I argue for a new understanding, or construction, of nature in the fi nal chapter, I will have to consider the challenge this 2009 reading of the national parks presents to my thesis. When Terry Tempest Williams says in the final interview, “Our national parks are places of pilgrimage . . . the closest thing we have in this country in terms of sacred lands,”50 is she simply reiterating the changeless story of the national parks or do her “pilgrimage” and “sacred lands” come from a new story of nature in America?

Part I

The New World

Introduction to Part I America Come of Age

Yosemite was established in 1865 when Congress and President Lincoln ceded land to California on the condition that the state “preserve it for the people.”1 In 1872, using much the same rationale, Yellowstone was established as the fi rst national park, not only in the U.S., but in the world—it was an American idea. The development of both parks came very quickly after “discovery” by Euro-Americans. That this idea appeared at all and developed so quickly is related to the cultural setting of the third quarter of the nineteenth century. Important to the establishment of Yosemite was the Civil War. A unifying focal point was needed and American land of spectacular beauty, located outside the center of the fray, was seen by Lincoln as a symbol of this unity. A more general condition of the period was the rise of industrialization, with increased access to and means of travel that led Americans to turn to tourism and create their own version of Europe’s Grand Tour. Coupled with this, the expanding settlement of the country increasingly opened the lands of the West as appropriate sites for pleasure travel. Finally, what was in the air of the culture was a sense of America coming of age, becoming more than an offshoot of England, and developing a culture in its own right. The land of America, especially as enshrined in national parks, became a key element of this new identity. In “The American Scholar” Emerson articulated the vision of the new American nation that, having declared its political independence fi fty years earlier, was now establishing, in the mid-nineteenth century, its cultural independence. “We have listened too long to the courtly muses of Europe,” he said, and prophesized, “A nation of men will for the fi rst time exist,” in America. But his fear was that “Young men of the fairest promise, who begin life upon our shores, inflated by the mountain winds, shined upon by all the stars of God” would soon succumb to the drudgery of business and industry. This American nation must, rather, stand for and live the greatest dreams of any nation on earth. The fi rst and most important of the influences needed to develop the American Scholar, and, hence, a truly American culture was nature. 2 This identification of culture with land in America goes back to the earliest travel literature which promised a “new world” that would create new

22

Pilgrimage to the National Parks

people; and the literature of the Republic identified the people, place, and nation of America as one entity. In American Incarnation Myra Jehlen argues that the land itself, the material reality of the continent, is the decisive factor shaping the founding conceptions of “America” and of “the American.” Although the ideas behind the Revolution, she notes, were from the European Enlightenment, when the democratic Enlightenment became associated with the North American continent, something new did emerge. . . . Grounded, literally, in American soil, liberalism’s hitherto arguable theses metamorphosed into nature’s material necessities. . . . Americans saw themselves as building their civilization out of nature itself. 3 The ideals of democracy and representative government seemed inevitably to spring from the American soil. The religion of the Republic made this conflation of land, people, and nation work. It was the Creator’s natural laws that were being manifest in the land and in the Republic. The Creator’s hand had fashioned this place and called its people (the Deists as much as the Puritans) to a special mission. Because of this religious element peculiar to the U.S., by mid-nineteenth century the European aesthetic experience of the sublime that connected nature and culture had in the U.S. transformed into a religious experience of God in nature, as Creation and Revelation merged.4 Because this nature was also the land of America, the nature out of which would come a truly American culture, to see and experience God in nature was also to honor the nation and to become a good citizen. It is not, then, surprising that when this new nation rejected the “courtly muses of Europe” and began to invent its own culture, it looked to American nature. And the land, by the second half of the nineteenth century, was changing. With settlement extending across the plains, the New West began to assume the role of the New World. The West with its wildness, grandeur, sense of possibility, openness, monumental mountains and deserts, canyons and rivers represented the limitless greatness of America. Within this context the construction of the national parks took shape, preserving the New World—archetypal America–in perpetuity. The grandeur of American nature, set aside in the parks, was the apotheosis of the greatness of the American people and their lively experiment, and the parks emerged as national shrines. But contained within these shrines were confl icting and contradictory values and ideals related both to the nature of nature— that nature could serve as an unchanging museum for Americans, and the nature of America—that it could hold both an unchanging original perfection and a dedication to progress. Another narrative, in striking contrast with this, also focused on land and American identity. This alternative discourse of empire was expressed by William Gilpin and C.W. Dana. Gilpin’s geographical and spiritual reading of the destiny of the American nation saw the geography of America as

Introduction to Part I

23

presaging the greatness of the American nation, largely because of its river system which forms “a complete system of irrigation” across the continent, unlike any other continent. These “geographical facts” showed “the American republic is then predestined to expand and fit itself to the continent.” He also said of the West, “nature here, more perfectly than at any other point upon the globe unites into one grand coup d’oeil all her grandest features, which, harmoniously grouped, present to the mind a combination of superlative sublimity.”5 Since geographically the West was portrayed as the most perfect manifestation of nature in the world, certain places in the West could become revered sites for proclaiming the greatness of America. The perfection of the American land is also seen in C.W. Dana’s The Great West, or the Garden of the World (1856). Although the garden of the world imagery is singularly inappropriate to much of the Great Plains and mountains of the West, it nonetheless demonstrates the symbolic power embedded in the western landscape. The Land of Promise and the Canaan of our time is the region which, commencing on the slope of the Alleghenies, broadens grandly over the vast prairies and mighty rivers, over queenly lakes and lofty mountains, until the ebb and flow of the Pacific tide kisses the golden shores of the El Dorado. With a soil more fertile than human agriculture has yet tilled; with a climate balmy and healthful, such as no other land in other zones can claim; . . . it does indeed present to the nations a land where the wildest dreamer on the future of our race may one day see actualized a destiny far outreaching in splendor his most gorgeous visions.6 Presenting the West as both biblical land and place of holy mission and resource awaiting economic exploitation by Euro-Americans, this vision reveals the ideal of Manifest Destiny which extended this natural superiority of America to include its moral and spiritual superiority as well. Using the language of mission, and paralleling the Puritan’s sense of God’s special calling for them and their land, it was clear that it was the duty of Americans to move across the unexplored West, cultivating the land through agriculture and civilizing it by converting or eliminating the Native Americans, until the whole continent—and indeed the whole world—received the spiritual and moral regeneration that would lead to the establishment of God’s kingdom. Although the second half of the nineteenth century was the height of the call for a “Christian America,” which is reflected in this sense of mission, it was also perhaps the height of unfettered and optimistic capitalism, which read this idea as the call to development and fi nancial (and geographical) empire building. The “moral and spiritual regeneration” would come because the greatness of the American nation and the American way of life would be realized from sea to shining sea. Not surprisingly, the

24

Pilgrimage to the National Parks

railroad was a key manifestation of this potential and the ability to realize it. Stranger, perhaps, the scenic western landscapes which would be the sites of national parks came to embody it as well. Art historian Matthew Baigell notes that the editor of Harper’s New Monthly Magazine wrote in 1858 that the American land “is strikingly adapted not only to greatness of empire, but to that peculiar form of greatness which seems to be received for our inheritance. . . . Taken in its whole it is a wonderful provision for the intelligence, sagacity, energy, restlessness and indomitable will of such a race as the Anglo-Saxon—a race that masters physical nature without being mastered by it—a race in which the intensest home-feelings combine with a love of enterprise, advent and colonization—a race that fears nothing, claims everything within reach, enjoys the future more than the present, and believes in a destiny of incomparable and immeasurable grandeur.” Baigell adds, “The Rockies and the Sierras, more awesome than the Catskills and the White Mountains, embody the inheritance mentioned by the magazine’s editor.”7 The visions of America that the West represented were multiple. Although Emerson’s Scholar resisted the drudgery of business and industry, the promise of the New World and the New West was unquestionably linked for some with the nation’s Manifest Destiny, along with the individual’s calling to take control of the landscape and realize his inalienable right to the unrestrained quest for prosperity. Some of those who flocked to the parks for the experience of the sublime saw the greatness of the American nation equally in the monumental mountains and in the railroad lines that brought tourists to the parks with such speed and comfort. Even though the rhetoric of the parks downplayed the latter, we see in the way the space developed that the parks celebrated and embodied not only the wonders of nature and the virtues of American democracy, but also the economic success of the nation. The multiple values embedded in the spatial construction of the parks mirrored the late nineteenth century dilemmas of a nation advancing at an extraordinary pace in terms of industrialization, urbanization, and unevenly divided wealth. There were those who saw the ideal Anglo-Saxon stock as being displaced by immigration and class warfare or by industrialization and saw the experiencing of the sublime within the order of luxurious accommodations in the parks as a way of preserving and confi rming “cultured” America. There were others who feared the debilitating effects of devotion to materialism and the loss of the “real life” in touch with nature and labor that had made America strong. The parks could represent for them a respite from the urges of progress and development and provide them an “authentic” experience of life in nature. And perhaps all shared

Introduction to Part I

25

to some extent the uneasiness over what it meant to be an individual and to share in an American identity, when the choices seemed to be a life of conformity or unchecked individualism.8 The national parks provided a space that allowed divergent values to stand: they embodied national unity and yet valued individual experience, whether it was the experience of the sublime or, with increasing frequency, the robust life in nature. The parks stood for American democratic ideals that lauded equality and for a contrasting “high culture” on which these ideals were felt by some to depend. They embodied the primal new world which was the archetypal source of American greatness, and included its manifest destiny and its technological progress, which made possible the viewing of “wild grandeur.” In spite of the alternative visions, whose incongruity was seldom noted, it seems to be the linking of nature and nation, both of which had been created and chosen by God, that enabled the national parks to serve as shrines where the mission and manifest destiny of this chosen nation could be ritually affi rmed and people could be renewed by the source of America’s greatness. Those who reported on or portrayed western lands were left with the question of which West to reveal—nature as wilderness, the sublime? The power of westward expansion, including mining and railroads?9 Indians as Noble Savages in this primeval new world or as dangerous or defeated savages fallen to the superior forces of Manifest Destiny? In the decisions the artists and commentators made—not unrelated, of course, to how their audience responded, and in the way Yosemite and Yellowstone developed, we see the narrative of the national parks unfold.

1

Yosemite New World Sublimity

The story of Yosemite begins in a deep valley in California, later to be lauded as a natural cathedral. However, even though the gold rush was in full swing nearby, it went unremarked by Euro-Americans until 1851 when mining entrepreneur James Savage, whose land acquisition and business had been disrupted by Indian raids, happened upon the valley. He led a volunteer militia which pursued the American Indians—Miwok/ Ahwahneechee—into the valley where they had set up camps. Even in the frenzy of this pursuit, one of the members of the battalion, Lafayette Bunnell, recalled the religious emotions and thoughts that were aroused by the “mysterious grandeur of the scenery.” He cringed at the coarse jokes of those around him, “as if a sacred subject had been ruthlessly profaned, or the visible power of Deity disregarded.” In response to the sense of the sacred he had experienced, he sought a worthy name for the valley but rejected foreign and even scriptural suggestions as inadequate. “An American name would be the most appropriate; . . . I could not see any necessity for going to a foreign country for a name for American scenery—the grandest that had ever yet been looked upon. That it would be better to give it an Indian name than to import a strange and inexpressive one; that the name of the tribe who had occupied it, would be more appropriate”—so he proposed to name the valley Yo-sem-i-ty. This, he said, is truly an American name.1 In spite of the honor offered by the naming, the Native Americans were evicted and the Euro-American story of Yosemite began. 2 Within five years tourists had entered the valley and within fi fteen years the land was set apart as a shrine for the American people. How are we to understand this rapid and remarkable popular and governmental interest in this difficult to reach, apparently worthless area? Simon Schama points out that it took many different voices and interests, interacting with the physical environment, for the cultural creation of Yosemite to occur. The wilderness, after all, does not locate itself, does not name itself. It was an act of Congress in 1864 that established Yosemite Valley as a place of sacred significance for the nation, during the war which marked the moment of Fall in the American Garden. Nor could the

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wilderness venerate itself. It needed hallowing visitations from New England preachers like Thomas Starr King, photographers like . . . Carleton Watkins, painters in oil like Bierstadt and Thomas Moran, and painters in prose like John Muir to represent it as the holy park of the West; the site of a new birth; a redemption for the national agony; an American re-creation. . . . And the fact that visitors had to descend to the valley floor only emphasized the religious sensation of entering a walled sanctuary.3 I would add that artists, ministers, and writers had the full collaboration of scientists, people in government, and entrepreneurs in this cultural creation. Together they constructed a language that became embodied in the physical landscape. This discourse included voices that were often in conflict, even with themselves, arguing for different means or ends, overlapping or competing with each other. But the place was able to contain them, to hold together the contradictions and coincidences, the confl icting values and beliefs of late nineteenth century American culture, thereby establishing its power as a sacred place. In this chapter we will explore these values in the language of art and religion—the sublime; the language of empire— Manifest Destiny; and the language of science—measurement, which were used to develop a story that would make sense of this valley. All revolved around the Americanness and the newness of the place. The uniqueness of the American landscape, and thus of America, was proclaimed through this story, with the disclaimer that language could not express the inexpressible wonders revealed in the valley. The tools for expressing the newness, developed by artists and writers, as well as scientists and entrepreneurs, shaped the way Yosemite came to be experienced as a pilgrimage site and to its being set aside by the federal government, although under state supervision, as a site to be protected for the enjoyment of the people.

THE NEWNESS OF THE NEW WORLD Two interesting processes are at work in this emphasis on newness, one related to art and religion, the other to nature. The fi rst is that because “nature” is cultivated by human minds, what is appreciated about nature, even what is seen, is the result of cultural imagination. The pastoral was the landscape that made sense at this time. Natural surroundings with gently rolling hills or placid water and lush vegetation blended with signs of human habitation, whether buildings, domesticated animals, or winding roads, to create a “nature” that satisfied the eye and the mind. The European landscape painters worked either with such pastoral scenes or with the ruins of Europe’s earlier history. The arid West with its desolate, stark, jagged mountains, in no way fit the desired scene. One of its central characteristics was that it had no history. There was no language to make sense

28 Pilgrimage to the National Parks of it aesthetically or morally. Thus, those who fell back on the language of newness and uniqueness or referred to the landscape as “indescribable” were speaking in some ways a literal truth. What was necessary, then, was the development of a vocabulary, a “form of perception,” that could make sense of and articulate this new western scenery. The other aspect of this newness relates to the evolving construction of western America as the reincarnate New World, as a way of symbolizing the power and uniqueness of American as opposed to European culture. The newness, then, relates both to a vision of America as its own unique culture and to an actual puzzlement because of a lack of aesthetic, moral, or even scientific discourse that would enable U.S. Americans to relate their lives and experiences to the western landscape. It would be the job of artists, entrepreneurs, and scientists to create cultural forms that would make sense of this newness. Not surprisingly some who saw this new landscape in Yosemite were unimpressed; it did not fit their story. Even Frederick Olmsted, who would later be a central figure in the planning of Yosemite Park, first saw Yosemite as desolate and dry, lacking the lushness of eastern landscapes; “the generally rugged aspect of the area” seemed not to fit his aesthetic taste at all.4 However, he came to be an enthusiastic supporter of making it into a park, not unlike Central Park in New York City, of which he was the primary architect—although nature in Yosemite had already done much of the planting of trees and grasses and had established the boundaries to set it apart as a place of restful contemplation. But to learn to go beyond the pastoral and appreciate the rugged mountains of the New World, ironically, western artists and tourists looked to Europe where new ways of apprehending landscape were developing. Edward Burke’s concept of the “sublime” (1757) as “a natural object or scene that inspired awe and a thrilling sensation of fear”5 created an appreciation for the dark forces of nature that did not fit the traditional canons of beauty. In fact, the more terrifying in their size, desolation, harshness, wildness, and emptiness, the more sublime they might be. Thus, the mountains of the West could be compared to the sublimity of the Alps or Andes—and the American mountains could be seen to be superior in sublimity to the others, and hence America itself was superior. Because of the close connection of the Creator and Creation in the U.S., the sublime was closely and overtly connected to God, which was not the case in Europe. Perhaps more important than Burke to late nineteenth century views of American nature was John Ruskin’s aesthetic. Mountain landscapes created an experience of emotional intensity that led him to say “mountains are the beginning and the end of all natural scenery.” His “mountain gloom” and “mountain glory” included, but went beyond Burke’s darkness. “No good or lovely thing exists in this world without its correspondent darkness. . . . Where the beauty and wisdom of the Divine working are most manifested,

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29

there also are manifested most clearly the terror of God’s wrath, and inevitableness of His power.”6 Ruskin influenced American artists and viewers in two different ways. On the one hand, his careful attention to natural processes and forms called for geological exactness when portraying mountains. Their supposed “jaggedness” was a sensationalistic invention of the sublime. The truth and meaning of mountains lay in their deep processes. Looking carefully one could see “their surface was figured with the whorls, loops, braids, and ropes of mineral matter that revealed the dynamic heaves and pressures of geological change.” His interest was not in human history, but in geological history. This connected with the scientific interests of many painters and photographers, as well as the American public. But science for Ruskin was a tool, not an end in itself, and he believed “what he called the ‘truth’ of mountain art could never lie in their literal transcription. Rather, it was in fi nding a visual idiom to convey the essence of the thing: the beautiful whateveritwas that drew men to mountains in the fi rst place.”7 This side of Ruskin was also an important influence in teaching some American artists and tourists how to story the new land with meaning, and the connection of scientific and spiritual revelation fit well with the American narrative. The language of science in the form of measurement and mapping also contributed to the development of a discourse that could make sense of monumental American lands. These lands became known fi rst through exploration and then expedition and in both there was at the same time a sense of adventure at exploring the new—the frontier spirit—and of establishing knowledge of the continent waiting to be civilized. The goal was a mapping of the land—its rivers and mountains, its flora and fauna, its geology and resources. Clearly the language of empire worked with the language of measurement. But perhaps more surprisingly, so did the language of art. Painters and photographers were almost always included in the expeditions so there would be a visual record of what was mapped. It is quite clear, though, that artists were not bound to be merely draftsmen, but were expected to record their vision of what the landscape meant. The vastness of the West invited mapping, measurement, and categorization; and it was here that science and tourism met and wed. “For scientists measurement is an essential step in the accurate description of an object and a basis for determining its nature and origin. For tourists measurement is the means of validating an object’s uniqueness.”8 For example, artists gave visual expression to the impressive height of Yosemite Falls, as scientists recorded its 2,425 foot height, and journalists described it as being six times the height of St. Peter’s in Rome thereby making the literal dimensions part of the mythic story. The Americanness which was intimately associated with this new story is also seen in a new understanding of the United States that developed during the tumult and soul-searching of the Civil War. “These United States” were threatened, and in response came the new perception of a nation that

30

Pilgrimage to the National Parks

was not a collectivity of states (these united states), but an entity in itself (the United States). On the one hand, the anxiety over the war would have diverted attention from the western lands and scenic wonders. On the other hand, the western lands—and particularly the establishment of a park for the nation’s people—could serve as a national landscape, outside the confl ict between North and South. Art was a crucial part of this process: “Seeking assurance in the continuity of the republic, [the country] sought an art that represented American nationalism in the sense of a single nation.” Indeed, praise of Albert Bierstadt’s The Rocky Mountains asserted such art “could help bind the country together” and perhaps give hope of a new America, unsullied by war and reunited.9 Within these contexts the land that was to become the park was the perfect setup for the embodiment of these several noncongruent voices. The “aura” of the place developed, as did its role as pilgrimage site, through the reports and productions of the photographers, painters, journalists, scientists, and promoters who had made the perilous journey and seen the wondrous sites. The presentations were diverse, but shared an interest in promoting the remarkable—and strange—landscape of western America, which was strikingly captured in Yosemite.

THE AMERICAN EXPERIENCE IN YOSEMITE In Yosemite, as at any pilgrimage site, the many voices that contributed to developing its narrative were often confl icting, having different goals and using different approaches. We return to the origins of Yosemite, examining the diverse stories that grew out of experiences of the place. We will listen to various voices—of entrepreneur Hutchings, editor Horace Greeley, minister Thomas Starr King, and geologist Clarence King, as well as various artists and visitors—to see how a discourse developed that sacralized this American land, connecting it to God or to the sacred processes of the earth and always to the greatness of America. Following the eviction of the Ahwahneechees who, Bunnell noted, were not able to appreciate the sublime beauty of the Yosemite Valley, as could the Anglo-Saxons,10 the American entrepreneurial spirit took hold in the valley. In 1855, after only a few groups had gone into the valley, James Mason Hutchings escorted the first tourist party and included the artist Thomas A. Ayres to sketch the scenery. On Hutchings’ return his story and Ayres’ pictures quickly spread to the East and Yosemite’s life as a tourist attraction began. Even though the reports, both visual and verbal, presented Yosemite (and the West in general), as an undeveloped, uninhabited place (except for occasional pastoral Indians), in fact the development was immediate. Hutchings’ California Magazine published the story of Yosemite along with Thomas Ayres’ sketches of waterfalls that were dramatic in their simple, clean lines, plunging a vast distance to the open valley below. “By

Yosemite

31

Figure 1.1 Yo-Semite Falls, 1855. Lithograph after Thomas Ayres. (Yosemite NPS Library.)

32

Pilgrimage to the National Parks

eliminating detail, flattening surfaces, and sharpening cliff edges,” he dramatized the height of Yosemite Falls and the perpendicularity of the walls, giving an otherworldly quality to it.11 The falls were the fi rst attraction of Yosemite, and their sublimity was stressed. When these drawings were published in the Boston weekly Ballou’s Pictorial in 1859, very little text accompanied them, pointing instead to the pictures, “to give the untraveled reader some idea of the scenery in the wildest and most romantic part of the land of gold.”12 The sublime scenery was made all the more desirable by lying next to the gold fields of California; the spiritual and entrepreneurial worked together without apparent confl ict. The year following Hutchings’ tourist party, the fi rst hotel and the fi rst toll road were established. More accurately referred to as a horse toll trail, it provided a very rough and difficult journey down the steep incline from the rim into the Valley. Ferries transported people and horses over the river for thirty-seven and a half cents per head and one could visit Bower cave for a dollar.13 The touristic elements are obvious, but there was no luxury on this arduous journey. Even after 1869 when travelers from the East could take the transcontinental railroad to San Francisco, where they were fitted with appropriate clothing for the journey, the stagecoach ride was unpleasant and long. Indeed, not all found the difficulty worth it. A personal narrative of such a one begins with a quotation from Bret Harte’s “The Luck of Roaring Camp” (1870): “Lunatics had not yet reached such depth of imbecility as to ride of their own free will in California stages.” The journeyer begins the stage trip at Stockton with great (if sarcastic) enthusiasm. “I was stricken with the Yo Semite fever. I was enthusiastic over the prospect of what was before me. I wanted to commune with Nature.” The reason for the sarcasm becomes clear as the journey begins: “I had heard of the dust of California roads, but this surpasses belief. . . . I was choked by the dust . . . I put my head gasping out of the window to see the driver. He was gone; so were the horses. Presently the road began to grow worse; then—‘Oh, driver, stop! let me get out and walk!’ . . . The brute, unmindful, tears madly on—jolting over rocks.” When they come to the end of the stage road, the travelers feel great relief. At least you can now regulate your own miseries, and need no longer be a poor thing beaten and banged by a merciless stage-driver without remorse. This is your theory. It is groundless. Ferguson now takes the place of the stage-driver and becomes the Avenger. The reader will scarcely ask me who Ferguson the Avenger is. He is the guide.14 The account ends with an admonition never to ride in a California stage. Throughout there is no mention of scenery or anything to relieve the pure torture. Clearly, not all were caught up in Yosemite’s mythic grandeur. Nonetheless, for many the difficulty of the journey seemed only to contribute to its spiritual meaning and the sense of a pilgrimage. In the

Yosemite

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Mariposa Gazette Hutchings describes the trip on horse from Coulterville to the valley floor in detail (which he records as taking thirty-six hours to travel the fifty-seven miles), marking the stages and landmarks along the way, much as a pilgrimage route. The climax is the fi rst glimpse of the valley, about which he says, “the fi rst view of the convulsion-rent valley, with its perpendicular mountain cliffs, deep gorges, and awful chasms, spread out before us like a mysterious scroll, took away the power of thinking, much less of clothing thoughts with suitable language.” He follows this with a quotation from Revelation 6:12–17 regarding the opening of the Sixth Seal, evoking the drama of the end of time. Hutchings uses the language of the sublime to evoke the stimulatingly terrifying and adds to it the end-of-the-world, millennial imagery of the Bible to give his readers a glimpse of this indescribable world. One of his fellow travelers at length whispers, “This verily is the stand-point of silence.” Hutchings responds, illustrating the coming together of the touristic and spiritual, “so let it be written in the note-book of every tourist, as it will be in his inmost soul when he looks at the appalling grandeur of the Yo-Semite valley from this spot.”15 Of course, Hutchings is a booster and hopes to sell magazines and get people out to stay in his hotel. Nonetheless, the spiritual experience of the journey is a significant part of the discourse. Interest in this valley in California and the religious experience it evoked was not confi ned to the West. Horace Greeley, editor of the New York Tribune, traveled to California in 1859, and his letters brought news of the West to his newspaper readers (later published as An Overland Journey from New York to San Francisco). He begins with the justification for writing the letters : “much of the ground passed over by the writer was absolutely new—that is it had never before been traversed and described.”16 Although he seems to be participating at least in part in the mythology of the New World, as he sees himself as the fi rst to venture into this pristine land, he shifts to the narrative of loss when he says that things are changing so rapidly in the “region between Missouri and California” that his letters will provide a record of what soon will have disappeared. Known for his conversion to expansionism and dedication to assaying the value of land for American development, his record of the journey pays particular attention to agricultural interests and, as he goes further west, mining interests. Nonetheless, his entrepreneurial focus recedes when he reaches Yosemite. He had declined to look down into the valley before they began their descent, “feeling the need of steady nerves,” but on arrival, his fi rst sight of the Valley, in the moonlight, after a full day’s exhausting travel creates an experience of the mysterious sublime: “That fi rst full, deliberate gaze up the opposite height! can I ever forget it? The valley is here scarcely half a mile wide, while its northern wall of mainly naked, perpendicular granite is at least four thousand feet high—probably more. But the modicum of moonlight that fell into this awful gorge gave to the precipice a vagueness of outline, an indefi nite vastness, a ghostly and weird spirituality.”17

34

Pilgrimage to the National Parks

Figure 1.2 Yosemite Valley from Glacier Point, 1874. Oil on canvas by William Hahn (1829–87). (California Historical Society Collections at the Autry/ Gift of Albert M. Bender/ The Bridgeman Art Library.) Note the attire of the women and men making this difficult descent, as well as the picnic trash they are leaving behind.

The fi rst view of Yosemite affected many in a similar way. Journalist Fitz Hugh Ludlow wrote of his fi rst view from Inspiration Point: “We did not so much seem to be seeing from that crag of vision a new scene on the old familiar globe, as a new heaven and a new earth into which the creative spirit had just been breathed.”18 Thomas Starr King, a Unitarian minister recently moved to San Francisco from Boston and already known as a writer of scenery through his book on the White Mountains of New Hampshire, traveled to Yosemite the year following Greeley and published his experience in Yosemite in the Boston Evening Transcript in 1860. His letters were of great importance in creating interest in Yosemite and in the way people saw it as a sacred place. In them he says, “How can I express the awe and joy that were blended and continually struggling with each other, during the half hour in the hot noon that we remained on the edge of the abyss where the grandeurs of the Yo-Semite were fi rst revealed to us?” “Nowhere among the Alps, in no pass of the Andes . . . is there such stupendous rock scenery as the traveler now lifts his eyes to. . . . Great is Granite and Yosemite is its prophet!” he proclaimed.19 In King’s comparison of the mountains of the Alps and Andes, the Americanness of this sublimity emerges. These manifestations of the Creator which brought one into the presence of the sublime were at the same time embodiments of the culture’s virtues and power that demonstrated it was the equal of, if not superior to, Europe. Always a stepchild to European culture when it came to history and tradition, America could now look to

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its natural spaces for its ancient history. The language of science and the language of religion were used, without apparent contradiction, to establish the “ruins” of ancient America in the geological wonder of the Yosemite Valley that was created over eons and in the ancient sequoia Big Trees. The great monolith of Half Dome and the majestic height and power of Yosemite Falls were compared to the cultural creations of antiquity and European civilization—with the wonders of the U.S. proving superior in age, size, and beauty. Yosemite was described as America’s national cathedral, and Greek temples and Gothic cathedrals paled in comparison. Not only were the sacred shrines of the United States vaster in scale, they were also far older in time—and made by God, not humans. Giving value to the European model by using the language of temples and ruins and glossing over the fact that natural history is not human history, the promoters of the American West at the same time evoked ancient days and continued to use the language of the “New World.” Without, apparently, being troubled by the confl icting images, in both cases the greatness of American nature confi rmed the greatness of American culture as well as the Creator’s blessing on this Chosen People. For Horace Greeley it was not the mountains, but the trees that were most impressive. “The Sierra Nevadas lack the glorious glaciers, the frequent rains, the rich verdure, the abundant cataracts of the Alps; they far surpass them—they surpass any other mountains I ever saw—in the wealth and grace of their trees.” When he reached the Mariposa grove of Big Trees, he struggled to describe the wonder of their size and age. Turning to the language of religious and classical history, and once again mingling the ancient and the New World, he waxed unusually poetic: “That they were of very substantial size when David danced before the ark, when Solomon laid the foundations of the Temple, when Theseus ruled in Athens; when Aeneas fled from the burning wreck of vanquished Troy, when Sesostris led his victorious Egyptians into the heart of Asia, I have no manner of doubt.”20 Another New Englander linked the nativity of the trees to the birth of “the Savior,”21 suggesting a mystical parallel between Christ and the New World that seemed to prophecy the destiny of America. Although Greeley’s appreciation for this spectacle of nature seems genuine and quite apart from his usual evaluation of landscape in economic terms, his interest in the trees does take a practical turn as he urges the local or state government to provide for the safety of the trees. He does not describe the danger the trees are in as coming from humans, but he does criticize the “vandals” who had removed bark from a tree in the Calavaras Grove. Attempting to market the sublimity of monumentalism, they had stripped bark a hundred feet up the tree and transported it to New York and to London as a moneymaking curiosity. Londoners, however, thought it too outrageous to be believed and the venture failed. Greeley reports his pleasure that they “have been heavy losers by their villainous speculation.”22

36

Pilgrimage to the National Parks

Hutchings also reports on the American sublimity of the Big Trees. “No pilgrims to Mohamed’s tomb at Mecca; or to the reputed vestment of our Savior at Treves; or to the Juggernaut of Hindostan, ever manifested more interest in the superstitious objects of their veneration, than the intelligent and devout worshippers of the wonderful in nature, and science, of our own country, in their visit to the Mammoth Tree Grove.” As he sees the trees, “One thought, one feeling, one emotion; that of vastness, sublimity, profoundness, pervades the whole soul.” He shares with Greeley a desire to protect the trees. Although he describes with interest and amazement how on the Fourth of July, “32 persons were engaged in dancing four sets of cotillions at one time” on the stump of a felled tree, he goes on to say, “In our estimation it was a sacrilegious act . . . an act of desecration.”23 Both of these promoters of expansionism marked off the wonders of the Yosemite Valley and the Big Trees from normal commerce, which did not belong here anymore than in a church. In addition to the clear demonstration of American culture’s equality with Europe, the set aside land of Yosemite and parks to follow were seen as affi rming U.S. newness and superiority in another way. Although the spiritual aesthetic of nature was widespread in Europe, the American reading of this was that in Europe there were indeed “pleasuring grounds,” grand gardens, exquisite landscapes—which were all on the estates of the aristocracy. It was they who would benefit from the spiritual effects of the beauties of nature. To stroll through such landscapes was to participate in a grand culture—if one were “cultured.” What was seen as new in their approach was not a different experience—that was why it made sense to the Yosemite party to think the whites could better appreciate the beauty of the valley than the Yosemite Indians: they were, after all, savages, which meant for one thing that they could not appreciate beauty, a dimension of culture. But in the U.S. this experience would be available for all the people—that is, all Anglo-Saxons—and, in something of a circular argument, since one needed the cultivated sensitivity to appreciate nature, the national parks would be the means for the “common man” to develop the spiritual culture which was required for the American democracy to work. The power of this site was seen, then, in many ways and articulated by many voices. One additional voice was that of scientist Clarence King, leader of several geological surveys, including into this area of the Sierra Nevadas. He brings together science and sublimity—although not without tension—as he experiences the wonder of the trees: “No imperishableness of mountainpeak or of fragment of human work, broken pillar or sand-worn image half lifted over pathetic desert,—none of these link the past and to-day with anything like the power of these monuments of living antiquity.” King does not use the language of pilgrimage or of God in nature that came naturally to the lips of some; and he struggled with his experience, on the one hand, and his scientific approach, on the other. He humorously asks himself, “has a student of geology so far forgotten his devotion to science? Am I really fallen to the level of a mere nature-lover?” While sternly rededicating himself to science

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(and indeed he does uncover a significant fossil), he is captured again by the beauty of the place. Although he expresses his admiration for Ruskin’s ideas at other times, here he berates Ruskin for his mysticism because he feels himself caught in it. He presents science and religion as being in conflict, and he will choose science. But the experience he reveals is of a nature that can be known as a scientist knows and that is at the same time fi lled with a meaning and grandeur beyond science. He says if one “love the tree for its own grand nature, he may lie in silence upon the soft forest floor, in shadow or sunny warmth . . . and spend many days in wonder.”24 He does not want a religion that denies the reality or priority of the living things, but his testimony to his experience in nature leads in others to a new way of talking about spirit and about nature. Ordinary tourists also contributed to the development of this new story, as well as taking on the established forms that rapidly became sedimented in the land and in the culture. Yosemite was referred to by early travelers as “an American Eden,” a “natural cathedral” and tourists saw themselves as being on a “pilgrimage” “and posed as transcendentalist worshipers of God through nature.”25 We see the language of sublimity, which seems to be used in an established, even ritualized form, by this tourist: Writing of one moonlit evening on the banks of the Merced River below the Yosemite Falls, one visitor in 1884 reported that “I felt absolutely thrilled with delight at the beauty, grandeur, and solemn silence that surrounded us. The stillness was almost awful, broken only by the distant continuous whisper of the great waterfall. . . . When our feeling of awe seemed most intense and we thought nothing would make the scene grander, there came a startling clap of thunder & flash of lightening [sic] and a heavy shower of rain came rattling down upon us and the storm made grandeur sublimity.”26 We see in these various voices–of ministers, scientists, writers, entrepreneurs, and visitors—the establishment of a place “like no other.” Despite their different approaches and views, their language is all contributing to the construction of a sacred space, a place where one should not dance on a tree stump, but should hold it in reverence, a place of mystery and beauty that exceeds language and equals or goes beyond what Europe could offer. It was American and it was unique. As Fitz Hugh Ludlow, a writer who traveled with Albert Bierstadt to Yosemite in 1863, said of the valley, “If report was true, we were going to the original site of the Garden of Eden.”27

THE ART OF PERCEPTION While writers were working to create forms that would articulate the meaning of this new world, artists were doing the same through painting

38 Pilgrimage to the National Parks and photography. While the proclaimed desire was to reveal the absolute newness and uniqueness of this American landscape, in fact the artists had to rely on traditional forms. This was the artistic language they had at hand and it was what their viewers would understand. Nonetheless, the new landscape also shaped the artistic language of those who sought to portray it, in both literal and imaginative ways. The physical reality of the western landscape with its new flora and fauna, its vastness and monumentalism demanded new forms of expression. Further, the never separable imaginative question of what was to be portrayed—that is, what was the meaning of this physicality?—was answered differently by each artist, providing both contestation and dialogue as the meaning of the West was explored. Painter Albert Bierstadt and photographer Carleton Watkins will be the focus of this discussion. Through their different art forms they both share in the construction of a western landscape that contained the story of power of the American land and of the American people; and through their forms of presentation they taught Americans how to experience their land. They named the sacred places and enabled the pilgrims to experience them, if not at their actual sites, then through stereoscopic photography or panoramic exhibits, both of which emphasized bringing the viewer into the experience of the landscape. Albert Bierstadt’s paintings of the West brought together European painting styles with American landscapes and the theme of Manifest Destiny. The child of a German immigrant family, Bierstadt lived the American success story. A New Englander, he studied painting in Dusseldorf, known at that time for its emphasis on technical detail—a Dutch- influenced realistic style, but also for including romantic emotional approaches. 28 Bierstadt was as much entrepreneur as artist, clearly a man of the “empire”; and he saw the future of his art, as of the United States, to lie in the West. So he became explorer as well as artist and joined the Lander railroad survey in 1859, traveling as far as the Rocky Mountains. His approach of “romantic realism” enabled him to make use of scientific knowledge he had gained on the survey, as well as to portray the sublime. Art critic Nancy Anderson says that Bierstadt went west with the “near-perfect combination of technical expertise, European experience, national enthusiasm, and marketing savvy—everything required to turn the western landscape into an iconic image of national defi nition.”29 He is said to have “domesticated the West,”30 creating the “markers” by which the sights would be known, 31 both by those who traveled west and by those who experienced it vicariously through his paintings. The fi rst of these images to capture the American imagination was his 1863 painting The Rocky Mountains, Lander Peak, which shows how the artist interacted with the landscape as he created the meaning of the New World for his viewers. The large (6’x10’) painting was exhibited as what was called a “Great Picture,” a showing that imitated the pre-cinematic panoramas. A single artwork would be shown, often with an entrance fee,

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in a large, public exhibit. The painting would be draped regally and special lighting and viewing lenses enhanced the optical impact. Explanatory pamphlets would be sold, as well as reproductions.32 Bierstadt’s painting was a great success, providing both spectacle and information about the mysterious West. Bierstadt’s way of working in both this and the Yosemite paintings was to begin with sketches or photographs and use them to create his own majestic landscape. Thus, the details of the paintings are often accurate, but the scene as a whole is a creation of the imagination. Art critic of the time James Jackson Jarves was critical of this, or at least puzzled by it: “With singular inconsistency of mind [Bierstadt] idealizes in composition and materializes in execution, so that, though the details of the scenery are substantially correct, the scene as a whole often is false.”33 This is seen in the Rocky Mountains painting as he creates and names a specific site, including mountain and lake, which does not exist. Notably, Native Americans are part of this ideal new world setting. Clearly, Americans were hungry for information about the land of the West; thus, he specified exact locations, as if they were literally true. But hand in hand with this desire for information went a longing for the inspiration to be found in the land where America’s Manifest Destiny would be realized, and this he also gave them. Bierstadt’s pamphlet describing the painting “concluded with the hope that, upon the painting’s foreground plain, ‘a city, populated by our descendants, may rise, and in its art-galleries this picture may eventually fi nd a resting-place.’”34 The untouched sublimity and the promised American civilization together evoked an experience that

Figure 1.3 The Rocky Mountains, Lander Peak, 1863. Oil on canvas by Albert Bierstadt. (Metropolitan Museum of Art, Rogers Fund, 1907.)

40 Pilgrimage to the National Parks held together, unnoticed, these contradictory elements of the mythic image of America and its destiny. After seeing Carlton Watkins’ photographs of the Big Trees of Yosemite, Bierstadt made a second trip west. His paintings of the Big Trees and the Yosemite Valley continued his iconic creation of the West. Spectacular, peaceful, presenting the West of possibility and an America untouched by the Civil War, his paintings evoked a great and pristine America. The response to the Yosemite paintings was, however, mixed. For example, two contrasting reviews of Looking Down Yo-Semite Valley appeared in 1865. One proclaimed, “It looks as if it was painted in an Eldorado, in a distant land of gold; heard of in a song and story; dreamed of, but never seen. Yet it is real.” Another demurred, “Such pictures as his ‘Yo-Semite Valley’ are mere pieces of scene-painting, gross caricatures of nature . . . wanting in all reality and faithfulness.”35 Clarence King’s appreciation for “natural and geological observation” paralleled Bierstadt’s artistic aspirations.36 However, in King’s collection of writings on mountaineering he has an artist he meets in his journeys in the Sierra Nevadas say of Bierstadt, “’It’s all Bierstadt and Bierstadt and Bierstadt nowadays! What has he done but twist and skew and distort and discolor and belittle and be-pretty this whole doggonned country? Why, his mountains are too high and too slim; they’d blow over in one of our fall winds. . . . He hasn’t what old Ruskin called for.’”37 As Anderson notes, Mark Twain may have the last, ambiguous

Figure 1.4 Looking Down Yosemite Valley, California, 1865. Oil on canvas by Albert Bierstadt. (Birmingham Museum of Art; Gift of the Birmingham Public Library.)

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word, when he said of The Domes of Yosemite in 1867, “’It is more the atmosphere of Kingdom-Come than of California.’” Indeed, in many ways this is exactly what he was trying to create. And California was, for many, “Kingdom-Come.” Anderson says, “Bierstadt’s glowing Yosemite Valley offered sanctuary for the Edenic myth and a glorious refuge from war” and provided a powerful stimulus to tourism in California.38 Anderson’s understanding of Bierstadt’s embodiment of the West, especially of Yosemite, shows him to be representative of the tensions integral to the story that was developing: He correctly perceived that, despite their voracious consumption of western resources and eager pursuit of industrial power, Americans were reluctant to give up the image of America as a pristine land divinely favored. In paintings that became visual sanctuaries (much the way national parks became literal sanctuaries), Bierstadt offered safe haven for the wilderness myth that lay at the heart of America’s defi nition of itself.39 This was not, however, uncontested; there were those who saw Bierstadt as missing the heart of the myth by making the western landscape a copy of the European. Carleton Watkins offers a different view of the West, even as he comes from a different background. He was a child of the frontier, growing up in Oneonta, a rural upstate New York town where nature and industry seemed to coexist without confl ict.40 His Scottish Presbyterian heritage shared the Calvinism of the Puritans, valuing clarity, order, and moral purpose, in nature as in humans, as well as recognition of the mystery of God and the threatening power of disorder, again in both nature and humans. For Watkins this translated into openness both to the beautiful orderliness of nature and its mystery and disorder and to the human task of ordering the world, whether through art, science, or commerce—all of which were put into play in the Manifest Destiny of westward expansion. Watkins did not study art or photography, but apprenticed to it when he moved west. In becoming a westerner, he may have realized that California was not the Promised Land, after all. He tried without much success to run a business; and he used the tools of business and science, seeing no confl ict between the natural and developed landscape. His photographic art lacks the atmospheric romanticism found in Bierstadt’s paintings—partially, but not entirely, a result of their different media. “Watkins instinctively avoided wind, mist, and fog, which dissolved the clarity he needed to describe things with acuity and in the specific terms of their local color.”41 Perhaps he also avoided dramatic romanticism because the West was home. Photography seems the perfect form of representation for the New West of the second half of the nineteenth century, bringing together art, a claim to accurate representation of reality, technology, and the possibility of mass

42

Pilgrimage to the National Parks

marketing—that is, art, science, technology, and capitalism. In addition, it was the new art and technology, suited to the adventuresome discovery of the new world in the West. Watkins was attracted both to this new form and the new west: “Watkins made most of his great pictures when he enjoyed the challenge of devising a shape for the previously undepicted. The novelty was important: it necessitated learning, and it was when dealing creatively with the unknown that Watkins was most alive.”42 Yosemite, the icon of the New World, was a perfect workshop for him. Watkins, along with a local boy, Collis Huntington, was drawn to the gold fever in northern California ; and he soon acquired powerful supporters in John and Jessie Benton Fremont and through them Unitarian minister and culture leader Thomas Starr King, all of whom had a strong interest in the Yosemite Valley. He also had excellent contacts with scientists, serving as photographer for Josiah Whitney’s and Clarence King’s California State Geological Surveys of Yosemite in 1865 and 1866. He maintained his association with Collis Huntington and was hired to do the photographic work connected with the Central Pacific Railroad, which Huntington along with Leland Stanford and others established. He seems to have been equally comfortable photographing the empty spaces of Yosemite and scenes that showed nature blended with human constructions, as in his Cape Horn near Celilo, which, Maria Hambourg says, “expresses the faith of not just Watkins, Huntington, and Murray but of a whole generation of Americans in the continuing westward advance of civilization. Yet it is more than an illustration of Manifest Destiny or of the local railroad’s route. The artful balance Watkins achieved between the valley etched by the river and the railroad laid down alongside it recognizes the providential harmony of nature and man in this place.”43 In this Watkins embodies the strange joining of an appreciation for nature untouched by humans and a belief in human powers to make it yield greater bounty. Watkins resolved to reveal the “’true sublimity’ of Yosemite” and traveled to the Yosemite Valley in 1861, transporting massive, fragile photographic equipment into the valley and to the tops of waterfalls.44 All this human struggle with technological equipment is hidden from the viewer who sees the splendors of Yosemite through a lens of order which reveals, while containing, the astounding forms of granite and water, the vastness of space and the imposing rock formations. Two of the ways his photographs reached the public were the panorama and the stereoscope. The experience each tried to create was what many easterners felt when they arrived in California: “the extraordinary immensity of the landscape.” His “basic artistic challenge [was] the rendering of western spaces, and the scale of western things.”45 The demand was to make imaginable what seemed preposterous to easterners. Both because of his interest in the immensity of the landscape and because of his work as a photographer for surveys, his photographs were frequently organized around visual conventions of measurement and factuality. Building his art from these scientific

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metaphors, he practiced what Douglas Nickel calls “An Art of Perception” to bring the viewer into the experience of the material reality. Pictorial transparency—the impression of being there at that very moment—is a trope often encountered in nineteenth century photographic criticism, but Watkins elevated the sensation of visual contingency to a new level; he cultivated an art of perception that presented photography’s mechanical reproductions as analogous to direct visual encounter. Looking at a Watkins photograph was thus meant to be not so much an intellectual as an experiential affair.46 This emphasis on vision—as Emerson asserted, “our age is ocular”—implies an objective observer who is manipulating or controlling the object seen. Indeed, Nickel argues that “Watkins’ photographs are consonant with the visual ideology expressed in the commanding view: they take optical possession of the terrain they survey, asserting a Victorian confidence in vision that understood implicitly the onlooker’s power to rationalize and transform what lay ahead.”47 I would suggest this is only part of it. Another aspect of the “art of perception” is its unremittingly sensual side wherein vision as a sense, not just a metaphor for rationality, takes in the world through its textures, dimensions, juxtaposition of objects, and the contrast of light and dark, creating the illusion of spatialization. The viewer is brought, in both the large photographs and the stereo views, into the picture not just as one who finds order , but as an often overwhelmed participant. This is not to discount Nickel’s “commanding view,” but to suggest that both were available for the viewer’s experience, again indicating the confl icting values embodied in the landscape. The presentation of Watkins’ large photographs imitated the panorama, a nineteenth century attempt at “virtual reality,” in which viewers sat at the center of a circular building and were surrounded by a work of art.48 The usual ways of viewing photographs at the time were in a book or on cards, and they were called “views,” but Watkins chose to present his as a work of art—a landscape painting. He pieced together several of the mammoth plate images to create the vastness of the West, suggesting the possibilities of unlimited space. Thus, the viewer’s experience goes beyond the “illusion of spatialization” to a spatialized way of knowing. As a viewer of The Grisley Giant reported in The Philadelphia Photographer in 1866: The tree was manifestly a very fi ne one, but we felt disappointed in regard to the apparent size . . . a giant perhaps but not a very great one—tall, but not particularly gigantic. On looking more attentively and minutely at the photograph, we discovered a group of men at the base of the tree! They were so small that at fi rst, they had escaped notice, but being once seen their effect upon the picture was magical. . . . We felt that we looked indeed upon a grizzly giant.49

44

Pilgrimage to the National Parks

Figure 1.5 Grisley Giant, 1861. Mammoth albumen photograph by Carleton Watkins. (Archives of the Gray Herbarium, Harvard University.)

Another mode where experiential involvement occurred was the stereoptic photograph, which was made with a camera that created dual views that in a special viewer, gave a sense of spatial depth. 50 The stereo view like the panorama mimicked actual viewing, while disrupting the senses and requiring them to see in a new way. Oliver Wendell Holmes claimed this new art form “cheats the senses with its seeming truth” and described the

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experience in this way: “The fi rst effect of looking at a good photograph through the stereoscope is a surprise such as no painting ever produced. The mind feels its way into the very depths of the picture. The scraggy branches of a tree in the foreground run out at us as if they would scratch our eyes out. . . . Then there is such a frightful amount of detail.”51 Watkins used this form to create a visceral experience of something that clearly seemed beyond reality. The result was to make this preposterous West seem real, authentic, and beyond known experience. Through technology and mass-marketing, Watkins’ views of the West— and Yosemite in particular—were brought to a large, popular audience. The Rev. H.J. Morton of Philadelphia said, with Watkins’ “photographic views, which open before us the wonderful valley whose features far surpass the fancies of the most imaginative poet and eager romancer . . . we are able to step, as it were, from our study into the wonders of the wonderous valley, and gaze at our leisure on its amazing features.”52 While serving as an entry into an exotic world, these photographs at the same time were understood by scientists to provide accurate illustrations of geological and botanical information. Combining the scientific and mythic, artists helped to shape the form and meaning of what would become a pilgrimage site of American culture.

PRESERVED FOR THE PEOPLE Less than ten years after Hutchings led the fi rst group of tourists into the Valley, President Lincoln signed the bill granting to the State of California the “Gorge” known as the “Yo-Semite Valley” and the “Mariposa Big Tree Grove” on the condition that “the premises shall be held for public use, resort, and recreation; shall be unalienable for all time.”53 We have seen some of the story, told through words, pictures, and physical travel, which provided the context out of which the decision was made. But how are we to understand what happened in those ten years that led to the grant—not in itself unusual—that was to be kept out of the economic play of private ownership—a novel idea? Clearly, important contributing factors included the national acclaim the region had received through Watkins’ photographs, especially the stereographs that found their way into a large number of American homes and the articles his photographs illustrated; Bierstadt’s paintings; the presence in popular journals of stories of journeys to Yosemite by well-known cultural leaders such as Horace Greeley and Thomas Starr King; and the scientific attention to the region through the Geological Survey, led by Josiah Whitney, accompanied by Clarence King. All of these contributed to the larger national context in which the action in California and Washington, D.C. took place. Somehow through the creations of journalists, photographers, artists, scientists, government, and business, the site had become not just any space, but a space that enshrined the greatness and wonders of the United States of America.

46

Pilgrimage to the National Parks

Just how this passage came about “remains largely a mystery,” as Yosemite historian Alfred Runte says. And, as with all sacred sites, the stories that are told of its origin are various and perform a mythic function. Runte says what can be known is this: “On February 20, 1864, Israel Ward Raymond, the California state representative of the Central American Steamship Transit Company of New York, sent a letter to John Conness, the junior senator from California, urging the preservation of Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa Grove of giant sequoias.” The letter referred to “several others,” unnamed, and included photographs of the Valley. Urgency in the matter was requested because surveying of the valley and hence some control over it would not occur for many years because it would not be worth it to the government. “The summits are mostly bare Granite Rock. In some parts the surface is covered only by pine trees and can never be of much value.” So it is “important to obtain the proprietorship soon, to prevent occupation and especially to preserve the trees in the valley from destruction.” Raymond called for the public use, “inalienable forever but leases may be granted for portions not to exceed ten years,” thus ensuring private enterprise would occur in this public place. 54 When Conness presented the bill to Congress, he repeated the “worthless, yet invaluable” thesis: “for all public purposes worthless, but which constitute, perhaps, some of the greatest wonders of the world.” Conness then added his own argument, reminding the Congressmen of how the British had denied the reality of the sequoia bark that the entrepreneur had taken on tour in Europe, declaring it to be a “Yankee invention.” This, then, was a way to demonstrate that reality to Europe and hence to enhance the greatness of America in the eyes of the world. His fi nal argument was that it would cost nothing, which was important because of the war economy. Runte’s interpretation suggests that preservation of the Big Trees was a central objective (even though Conness uses the desecration of the sequoia that was taken on tour with some national pride) in presenting and passing the bill. Regulation of development in the valley was another, since hotels and toll roads were already springing up at will. Nonetheless, free enterprise would not be denied, but only regulated (at this point in no other way than restricting leases to ten years). Finally, I read his interpretation to suggest that the movement from “natural wonder” to “national park” was closely related to the already existing connection between nature and nation. The site would serve as a sign of American greatness to Europe and a place of American pilgrimage for the people at this natural monument to the nation. President Lincoln signed the bill into law on June 29, 1864. Others who have studied this event have added their own emphases, details, and interpretations. Maria Hambourg, in her study of Carlton Watkins, notes that the photographs I.W. Raymond sent to Senator Conness were by Watkins and that he was aided in his application to Senator Conness by Jessie Benton Fremont, daughter of Senator Thomas Hart Benton,

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patron to Carlton Watkins, and friend of Yosemite supporter Thomas Starr King, who might also have been an influential voice before his death in 1864. Mrs. Fremont was also wife of John Fremont, but rather than seeing him as a supporter of the bill, Hambourg says the purpose of the bill was to protect “Yosemite and the Mariposa Grove from commercial exploitation, otherwise a likely fate given the practices of men like Fremont and Park” (his business partner at Mariposa Mines), though Raymond is, of course, a business tycoon and Mrs. Fremont the wife of one. Without noting this (possibly accurate) separation of the good entrepreneurs from the bad entrepreneurs, her read is that when Lincoln signed “a law of inviolation for the tract” he was giving a “tacit recognition of the necessity of natural conservancy in a climate of rampant development.”55 The establishment of the park is, then, primarily a statement for conservation and against the dominant urges toward development of the time. Another view is presented by Simon Schama, who sees in Yosemite a symbol of a landscape that was beyond the reach of sectional conflict, a primordial place of such transcendent beauty that it proclaimed the gift of the Creator to his new Chosen People. Only the sense that Yosemite and the Big Trees constituted an overpowering revelation of the uniqueness of the American Republic can explain Abraham Lincoln, in the midst of the Civil War, signing an unprecedented bill. Schama does not mention Raymond’s involvement in the process, but says Conness was supported by “Governor Frederick Low and the influential state geologist Josiah Whitney. And there is no doubt that the landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted . . . also had an important hand in its promotion.”56 Schama’s interpretation, then, has a twofold emphasis: he sees the establishment of Yosemite as providing a symbol of a possibility of national healing and reunion beyond the war and stresses the connection with the park concept Olmsted had been developing in New York City. All of these accounts undoubtedly reveal at least some of the “various gentlemen of California, gentlemen of fortune, of taste, and of refi nement,”57 and at least one lady, who were instrumental in establishing the climate in which the idea became a reality, whether or not they were all working with Raymond and Conness. Further, all these accounts add different emphases, which I think were all present to some degree in the process: preservation of the Big Trees and minimal regulation of development in the valley; establishment of a national monument, a shrine, that would proclaim American greatness and provide for national unity; promotion of tourism; and democratic concern for “the people.” In all cases, the spectacular wilderness landscape (an oxymoron) became the symbol for the nation and a place for regeneration of Americans and of the nation, and a proclamation of American culture as worthy of European notice. As land set aside “forever” it was established not as just a wonder of nature, but as a national shrine. It would

48 Pilgrimage to the National Parks be a place that stood for America and to which Americans could travel both to see and to participate in the greatness of their nation. After the Bill authorizing the Yosemite Grant was passed, these American dreams began—and not without confl ict—to be embodied in the Park. Frederick Law Olmsted was appointed to the Yosemite Commission and said of the Grant, “In Congresses’ view of the destiny of the New World, they believed it to be the duty of our republican government to preserve the Yosemite, guarded and managed for the free use by the whole body of the people forever.”58 In the report of the Commission he acknowledged that there was a “pecuniary advantage” to possessing these lands that would, because of their attraction, undoubtedly be a source of wealth for the government. Of far greater importance, he said, is the “scientific fact that the occasional contemplation of natural scenes of an impressive character . . . is favorable to the health and vigor of men and especially to the health and vigor of their intellect . . . and increases the subsequent capacity for happiness and the means for securing happiness.” Thus, visits to the park would create a citizenry able to participate in a democracy. In order to secure this opportunity for the people, The fi rst point to be kept in mind is the preservation and maintenance as exactly as it is possible of the natural scenery; the restriction, that is to say, within the narrowest limits consistent with the necessary accommodation of visitors, of all artificial constructions and the prevention of all constructions markedly inharmonious with the scenery or which would unnecessarily obscure, distort or detract from the dignity of the scenery. 59 Olmsted presents a vision of the park that focuses on the virtues of nature and the distinctive American democratic approach to these virtues, as Emerson would have affi rmed, and adds the necessity for preservation in order for the park to serve as a perpetual resource for democracy. All involved in the development and management of the park would have enthusiastically affi rmed Olmsted’s views on the role of nature in a democracy. However, his minimizing of the importance of the fi nancial side and the restrictions on development he proposed clashed with the views of many. The confl ict between these views is evident in how the Grant was interpreted and how the valley developed. Olmsted had argued in the Yosemite Report that in order to make the park available for all the people, a road should be constructed to make travel both more comfortable and affordable (and so the natural surroundings would not have to be disturbed for lumber or food supplies, which could be imported). To provide lodging for travelers he said there should be a limited number of “bed and breakfasts,” which would be provided free of charge by the few allowed to lease cottages in the valley, who would also supply camping parties with food and equipment.60 By early in the twentieth century what resulted instead was

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an extensive concessionaire’s for-profit operation, a road system that soon facilitated automobiles, and a vast publicity campaign by the newly formed National Park Service to bring tourists to Yosemite. Both commerce and spirituality worked together, although not without confl ict, as this site of New World sublimity became established.

2

The Dream of Yellowstone Progress in the Pristine Land

Imagine that you are sitting around a campfi re in the Montana territory in 1870 after having spent nearly a month exploring the almost unbelievable country of geysers, mud pots, great canyons, and waterfalls. You are part of the Washburn-Doane expedition led by General Washburn, the surveyor general of the Territory of Montana, with a military escort headed by Lieutenant Doane. You listen to Nathaniel Langford, later to be the fi rst superintendent of Yellowstone National Park, recall his experience of the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, which can only be described as sublime: “The danger with which it impresses you is harrowing in the extreme. You feel the absence of sound, the oppression of absolute silence. If you could only hear that gurgling river . . . you would rise from your prostrate condition and thank God that he had permitted you to gaze, unharmed upon this majestic display of natural architecture.”1 As you sit around the campfi re, considering all you have seen, not surprisingly for a group of western men in 1870, your thoughts turn to enterprise. One suggests laying claim to the land, dividing it into eight parts, and each setting up a tourist attraction so others could see these remarkable natural wonders and you could make a good profit. Cornelius Hedges, the true-speaking man of the West (and a Yale graduate with a Harvard law degree), responds: It seems to me that when nature brings into being a region such as we have seen these last 25 days, that it belongs, not to a few men, or even a state or territory, but to the people, all of the people. That it should be an area for enjoyment and recreation, free from all the strains of commercialism, selfish interests, and private ownership. We have here just now conceived an idea—that of setting aside the area we’ve discovered as a kind of park. That’s my idea, too, but I feel, and strongly, that it must not be a privately-owned or operated park, but a national park. The banker says that although he believes in private enterprise, he agrees that “this should be the property of the people, owned by them and operated

The Dream of Yellowstone 51 by their government.” One naysayer replies that this sounds like socialism or that fellow Karl Marx over in Germany or somewhere and will rob the individual citizen of initiative, take money out of his pocket. And Benjamin Stickney, pioneer merchant, muses, “For one thing it might help bring a railroad through this way.”2 This scene is taken from the Campfi re Day Pageant, a ritual enactment of the mythical meaning of what occurred in 1870, a version of which was fi rst presented on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the establishment of the Park (at least in part written by Garnet Holme of Ramona fame) and revived and revised in 1959–1963 by Bert Hansen, from which this story is taken. Despite the overstatement, if not invention, of the Washburn-Doane Expedition’s role in the creation of the National Park, the campfi re story took on the mythic qualities of an origin story because it fit with the ideals of the Park to have these leading citizens of a western territory experiencing a revelatory moment about their land and their nation around a campfi re in the stupendous country.3 Although the Campfi re Story turned out to be more mythical than historical, its symbolic power fi rmly held together the confl icting messages that were entwined in the establishment of the National Park. As with Yosemite, the conviction that the democratic heart of America was connected to the land of America was dominant. Thus, in acknowledging the special, sacred character of this place, one was honoring the nation and putting oneself in touch with the powers—natural and spiritual working together—that made the nation great. The sacred site embodied certain values and ideals of the culture in a way that physically illustrated the greatness of America and which could be visited for one to be reinforced in these values. However, as with all sacred sites, competing values and ideals of the culture were both manifest and held together in the sacred site. The dominant alternative value in this case is revealed in the Yellowstone origin story: maybe the railroad will come in. Clearly in the case of Yellowstone the railroad, and all it stood for in late nineteenth century America, is a dominant part of the story.4 Whether bringing these opposing values of undeveloped, pristine American land and the progress of an industrial society together in the holistic symbol and experience of the National Park is a way of denying the confl ict between them or of bringing it to light so it can be consciously considered is a question for this chapter, and for this book. In either case, it served the function of a pilgrimage site in embodying and displaying the values of the culture. We will examine this in terms of the construction of the idea of the national park, particularly through artists and scientists, and then how this idea became embodied in the physical construction of a place tourists could visit—primarily by developing opportunities for travel and lodging—and the dual experience of the demonic and the wonderful that visitors had there.

52 Pilgrimage to the National Parks WONDERLAND Be it enacted . . . that the tract of land in the Territories of Montana and Wyoming, lying near the head-waters of the Yellowstone River . . . is hereby reserved and withdrawn from settlement, occupancy, or sale . . . and dedicated and set apart as a public park or pleasureing-ground for the benefit and enjoyment of the people. The Yellowstone Act, 18725 The process that led to the establishment of Yellowstone as the fi rst national park began with the Washburn-Doane expedition from which the campfi re story originates. Although the mythic dimensions of the expedition developed gradually, the response to reports by Washburn, Doane, Hedges, and Langford was immediate and enthusiastic.6 After a month in the astonishing area, in August 1870 they brought back “news of a landscape that looked like nothing anyone had seen before. Brilliantly colored hot springs, strange limestone and sulfur formations, stupendous geysers, great waterfalls, and awe-inspiring canyons” surpassed description, Langford said; “It must be seen to be felt.”7 Cornelius Hedges wrote in the Helena Herald about the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone: “The view at fi rst is almost terrifying, and makes one’s knees knock together in conscious impotence. . . . [This] is in many respects the grandest waterfall in the world, and surely destined at no distant day to become a shrine for a world-wide pilgrimage.”8 Articles published locally soon appeared in newspapers in the East. In October 1870, a mere six weeks after the party’s return from Yellowstone, an editorial in the New York Times commented on Washburn’s reports of Yellowstone, which both demonstrated the widespread interest in the remarkable place and gave a glimpse of the East’s view of the West and westerners. The editorial praises Washburn’s account by saying, “perhaps the most graphic and effective descriptions of actual scenery come from those ‘plain people,’ as Mr. Lincoln would have called them, who, aiming at no graces of rhetoric, are unconsciously eloquent by the force of simplicity.”9 The leading citizens of Montana Territory—many of whom had come from the East and had advanced degrees—might not have approved this characterization of them, but the comments do show the equation of the West with a more basic, wild world in which both the land and the people share a power that has not been tarnished by civilization. These dueling positions—an appreciation for pristine, scenic wonders on the one hand and the achievements of industrial civilization on the other—get built into the Park. Interest in this strange new territory was increased by a lecture series on the wonders of Yellowstone that Langford undertook under the sponsorship of Jay Cooke of the Northern Pacific Railroad in New York, Washington, D.C., and Pennsylvania. Langford had been enlisted three months before the Washburn-Doane expedition by Cooke to publicize the wonders of the Yellowstone area,10 an interesting contrast to the campfi re story.

The Dream of Yellowstone 53 The Northern Pacific was seeking to move into Montana Territory, which Langford and his fellow Montanans were also eager for because Helena’s development was restricted by being five hundred miles from the railroad in 1871. Thus, we can assume that the railroad played a role in the expedition’s taking place at all, as well as in Langdon’s detailed record of the trip, which he wrote up for his lecture presentation on his return11 and as “The Wonders of Yellowstone” for Scribner’s Monthly in May and June 1871. The article was an invitation to view the transcendent wonders of this unknown world, even as it served the entrepreneurial aims of both the Montanans and the Northern Pacific. This entrepreneurial connection is also seen during Langford’s lecture tour as the Washington Star of January 10, 1871 featured on the front page a “notice by Jay Cook and Company promoting the Northern Pacific bond sales, while two columns over, there appeared an advertisement for Langford’s lecture that evening.”12 Nonetheless, the appeal of the land was real. One of the attendees at Langford’s first lecture was Ferdinand Hayden and what he learned there, as well as through reading Doane’s report to Congress in February 1871, led him to request governmental support for a survey of the region. In March of 1871 the Hayden Survey was funded by the government; and by June, with transportation for men and equipment provided by the railroad without cost, the expedition set out, made up of scientists—including entomologists, topographers, zoologists, mineralogists, and meteorologists13 —as well as photographer William Henry Jackson and artist Thomas Moran (who was sponsored by the Northern Pacific Railroad and Scribner’s). Hayden’s official report appeared in early 1872, along with articles in Scribner’s and the American Journal of Science and Arts, calling for the establishment of a public park. A bill was introduced in Congress in December and The Yellowstone Act was signed by President Grant March 1, 1872, less than two years after the first reports of the area came out of the Washburn-Doane expedition. Thus began the cultural construction of Yellowstone National Park— including the actual place, the art works, the scientific reports, the photographs, the essays—that allowed it to be held up as an American icon, a proper place to celebrate the U.S. But difficulties awaited this cultural construction. Although the Great Falls of the Yellowstone could be understood with Yosemite as a reference point, most of the “wonders” of Yellowstone were much more foreign. Just as Americans had to learn how to see the Rockies and Sierra Nevadas as sublime or picturesque, they now had to make aesthetic and spiritual sense of an arid, volcanic region of geysers, burbling mud pots, and sulphuric stench. Through the stories of the expeditions and surveys and the creations of artists and scientists, these came to be perceived as unbelievable scenic attractions that intrigued, fascinated, and appalled all at the same time: they were “wonders.” The Hayden Survey was part of a larger process to “explore and map the American West, make it accessible for development, and perhaps most importantly, bring what previously had been considered alien territory into

54

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the psychological consciousness of the people of the United States.” Art historian Joni Kinsey claims, and Cecilia Tichi concurs, that because of the publicity that came out of the Hayden Survey, “within just a few months the region was transformed in the public’s imagination from a kind of hell on earth to a spectacular “wonderland.”14 In the early nineteenth century, reports from two explorers were largely rejected as fantasy. “Colter’s Hell” was the title given to the reports of James Colter—unbelievable and disgusting. The region was referred to by James Bridger as “’a place where hell bubbles up.’” So how do we move from a cultural creation of “hell” to “wonderland,” as the Helena Daily Herald called it in 1872?15 Certainly the Northern Pacific’s promotion, including Langford’s essays and Moran’s art had a lot to do with it, but, I would note, the images of the demonic do not disappear. “Wonders” can include the inferno, and be all the more wondrous for that. Members of the Washburn-Doane expedition enthusiastically extolled the beauty of the region and referred to features as “Devil’s Den” and “lake of fi re and brimstone.” I would argue that the images of hell are not transformed by the Hayden Survey, but they continue to coexist with images of wonderland—both because “wonders” do not exclude the attraction-repulsion of the grotesque and because both the darker sides, as well as the beautiful sides of wonders were together a part of the transcendent attraction of Yellowstone that opened onto the sublime. Langford reveals the delicate interplay of hell and wonderland in his writings. Katherine Early asserts he values what is orderly and art-like, in other words civilized, in nature as contrasted to “hellish formations.” He describes a clear spring (which he admires) in this way: “It was encircled by a beautifully scalloped [sic] sedimentary border. . . . The regular formation of this border, among the most delicate and wonderful freaks of nature’s handiwork. They look like an elaborate work of art.” Note that even this orderly work is called a “freak” of nature—that is, a wonder. The “wonder-ful” was what was beyond the ordinary expectations of people, what was unique, bizarre, treacherous. Langford goes on to say, “The springs themselves were as diabolical in appearance as the witches’ cauldron in Macbeth and needed but the presence of Hecate and her weird band to realize that horrible creation of poetic fancy. . . . The disgusting appearance of this spring is scarcely atoned for by the wonder with which it fi lls the beholder.”16 Once again, comparisons to cultural forms are made, although this time to give a negative impression of the experience. Nonetheless, note that despite the “disgusting appearance,” the beholder is still filled with wonder. Paul Schullery, longtime Park Service employee and interpreter of Yellowstone, remarks on how frequently the Yellowstone experience—in that time and this—brings together these conflicting responses. “The weirdness fascinates and attracts us, and then the beauty rises to awe and stun. All is brilliant light and ominous shadow, alternating dazzling prismatic displays with the ‘dark, dismal, diabolical aspect’ of each place.”17

The Dream of Yellowstone 55 We see these confl icting responses in Rudyard Kipling’s account of his journey to Yellowstone in 1889. He clearly mocks both the American people and their wonders, but ends with his own experience of sublimity— which does not replace the negative experiences, but stands beside them. He begins his letter, Today I am in the Yellowstone Park, and I wish I were dead. The train halted at Cinnabar station, and we were decanted, a howling crowd of us, into stages, variously horsed, for the eight-mile drive to the fi rst spectacle of the Park—a place called the Mammoth Hot Springs. . . . The tourists . . . poured into that place with a joyful whoop, and, scarce washing the dust from themselves, began to celebrate the 4th of July. . . . The clergyman rose up and told them they were the greatest, freest, sublimest, most chivalrous, and richest people on the face of the earth, and they all said Amen. . . . The clergyman then bade the world note that the tourists included representatives of seven of the New England States; whereat I felt deeply sorry for the New England States in the latter days. They visited what Kipling called [T]he uplands of Hell. They call it the Norris Geyser Basin on Earth. It was as though the tide of desolation had gone out, but would presently return, across innumerable acres of dazzling white geyser formation. . . . Not ten yards from the road a blast of steam shot up roaring every few seconds, a mud volcano spat filth to Heaven, streams of hot water rumbled under foot, plunged through the dead pines in steaming cataracts and died on a waste of white where green-grey, black-yellow, and pink pools roared, shouted, bubbled or hissed as their wicked fancies prompted. . . . I [returned] to my buggy and the old lady, who regarding the horrors of the fire-holes, could only say, ‘Good Lord!’ at thirtysecond intervals. The day—and his letter—end at the Gorge of the Yellowstone. Evening crept through the pines that shadowed us, but the full glory of the day flamed in that cañon as we went out very cautiously to a jutting piece of rock—blood-red or pink it was—that overhung the deepest deeps of all. Now I know what it is to sit enthroned amid the clouds of sunset. Giddiness took away all sensation of touch or form; but the sense of blinding colour remained.18 The power of this pilgrimage site stems, in part, from the ability of Yellowstone to enable these conflicting responses to stand side-by-side.

56

Pilgrimage to the National Parks

THE TOOLS OF ART AND SCIENCE IN THE CONSTRUCTION OF YELLOWSTONE The cultural construction of Yellowstone was essential to its becoming a national park and, in doing so, embodying ideals of late nineteenth century America. As with Yosemite, artists, writers, and scientists were crucial in this endeavor. Langford’s “Wonders of Yellowstone,” published in Scribner’s in May and June of 1871 became the selling point to Congress after the park bill was introduced near the end of that year. Thomas Moran, an artist from Pennsylvania who had studied atmospheric landscape painters Turner and Constable in England in the early 1860s, was commissioned by Scribner’s to illustrate the Langford article. Moran did this working from amateurish sketches made by members of the party and Langford’s verbal descriptions. The illustrations were received with great enthusiasm, so it was no surprise when Scribner’s and the Northern Pacific Railroad financed Moran to join the Hayden Survey, despite the fact that exploration was foreign to him and he had never before ridden a horse.19 Hayden accepted him because the Survey was concerned about development as well as science and an artist sponsored by the Northern Pacific doubly served the former aim. Thomas Moran’s drawings and paintings became a central lens through which Yellowstone was seen and understood, through which it became part of the American identity. Stephen Mather, fi rst superintendent of the National Park Service, memorialized him at the time of his death in 1927, saying that he “more than any other artist has made us acquainted with the Great West.”20 In 1992 Yellowstone Superintendent Robert Barbee while noting the importance of Moran’s role in the politics leading to the establishment of the Park, went on to say, “‘And yet, what may be most impressive about Thomas Moran, and about William Henry Jackson, . . . is not what they achieved politically, but what they achieved aesthetically. . . . They had the vision to take a whole new world and defi ne its artistic possibilities for the generations that followed.’”21 What was this vision—of the landscape and of the nation—this art was understood to represent? To begin, Moran seems to have committed himself to the scientific nature of the Survey, trying to “justify his place with the party by adopting its scientific outlook and aims. His watercolor drawings are studies in geology, as he strived for accuracy in his presentation of rock formations and geysers with their unusual colorations. Both because of the Survey’s (and country’s) emphasis on science and, hand-in-hand, the valuing of photography’s ability and claim to produce authentic landscapes, Moran had to create a landscape that was convincingly “real,” even as it portrayed astonishing—if not necessarily factual—scenes. Although he valued Ruskin’s commitment to “record with passionate fidelity the beauties of God’s creation,”22 Moran’s stress on the individual relationship between humans and nature led him to say, “The motive or incentive for my Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone was the gorgeous display of color that impressed itself on me . . . and while I

The Dream of Yellowstone 57 desired to tell truly of nature, I did not wish to realize the scene literally but to preserve and convey its true impression.”23 His paintings, then, are an interesting combination, expressing the feeling of what he sees and employing photographic and geologic realism. This combination of realism and romanticism to open the transcendent in nature fit perfectly the American spirit of this time. William Jackson was the official photographer for the Survey. He and Moran worked closely together, the photographer developing painterly techniques and the artist, photographic realism. Moran routinely worked from Jackson’s photographs in creating his paintings. Moran’s paintings were sometimes criticized as exaggerations, but a comparison of Jackson’s photograph of Castle Geyser and Moran’s Castle Geyser, Upper Geyser Basin shows this is not true; in fact, Hyde argues that the “fantastic shapes and the teeming earth seem even more otherworldly in the photograph.”24 Jackson “acknowledged that ‘the great picture of the 1871 expedition was no photograph, but a painting by Moran of Yellowstone Falls. . . . It captured, more than any other painting I know, the color and the atmosphere of spectacular nature.’”25 What Moran’s art reveals is a landscape nearly barren of vegetation but rich with rising mist and steam with miraculous eruptions of water from the alkaline earth; strange colors of every hue with sharply blue waters contrasting with the pastel lands; an immense canyon and waterfalls whose colors and height brought one to dizziness. The

Figure 2.1 Castle Geyser, Upper Geyser Basin, 1873. Watercolor by Thomas Moran. (The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, xff F722H19.)

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Pilgrimage to the National Parks

Figure 2.2 Hot Spring Basin and Crater of the Castle, 1871. Photograph by William Henry Jackson. (U.S. Geological Survey Photos. The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, 19xx.316:05ax.)

canyon and falls, as well as the hot springs and geysers offer the experience of the sublime. With the help of science, we are taken into the mystery of the unknown landscapes, intrigued, and caught by their beauty, but also challenged by their power and strangeness. Ruskin, of whom American painters were so fond, criticized the work of American landscape painter Frederick Church and said about American landscape painting in general, which presumably would include Moran: “There are crude efforts at landscape-painting, made continually upon the most splendid physical phenomena, in America, and other countries without any history. It is not of the slightest use.”26 Without “historical authentication,” landscape had no meaning. Where then, could Americans turn? Perhaps, Moran suggests in his work, to the American land itself, which, in its meeting with the artistsscientists, who knew with their heads and their hearts, could impart the transcendent meaning that lay therein.

The Dream of Yellowstone 59 To be sure, not all responded the same way to the grandeur of Yellowstone. A reviewer of Moran’s Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone “complained about the ‘outlandish yellows’ in the painting and accused Moran of omitting ‘the magic which converts crudity into splendor.’”27 Nonetheless, as Kinsey and Tichi argue, a transformation did occur, if only gradually; and “Moran’s art played a major role in the way the places he depicted were perceived and ultimately utilized.”28 Moran’s art, like Bierstadt’s, presents a Great West that is vast and spectacular. In both one can find “the myth of a bigger, newer America.”29 Moran’s sense of connection between his art, American nature, and the nation is clear in his statements about the role of the American artist in creating a national culture. “‘That there is a nationalism in art needs no proof,’ wrote a sixty-four-year-old Moran in 1902. ‘Before America can pretend to a position in the world of art it will have to prove it through a characteristic nationality in its art. . . . [W]e possess a land of beauty and grandeur with which no other can compare.’”30 The implicit religious view is made explicit in Moran’s painting of the Mountain of the Holy Cross (1875), which is described as “an example of the search for a Christian symbolism in the new lands of Western America. [It] showed a natural cross of snow in crevasses on the side of a mountain peak, a phenomenon regarded by some at the time as of divine origin, and as an implicit blessing on westward expansion in general.”31 If the artist Moran dedicated his art to the scientific survey of the West in the interest of the true America, the scientist Hayden combined his geologic interests with a similar myth of a bigger and newer America. Scientific interests in surveying the land were generally connected with the allure of exploration of the unknown West, the remnants of the now-closing frontier. And Ferdinand Hayden was no exception. It was no surprise that when he learned of the Washburn-Doane expedition he put aside his plans to survey in Nebraska and Dakota to explore the wonders of Yellowstone. Along with adventure, the development and settlement of the West were of interest to him. Hayden stressed that “‘the science as well as the practical results of these explorations are of great importance to the material interests of the West.’” He included in his report, published in 1873, a piece by then Superintendent Langford, who predicted that the survey would help in discovering the area’s “’adaptability for wagon-road and railroad improvements’”; and both pasturage and lumbering would thrive when the railroad went through. As Early notes, “the survey saw the scientific work as contributing information to “prospective settlers, investors, and developers.”32 When it came to describing the landscape, historian Ann Hyde argues, Hayden, a trained geologist, did not have to struggle for words in the same way as Langford did. He recognized immediately that European analogies had no relevance in this new world, and the language of science now served him well. He rarely used architectural terms or the rhetoric of the sublime. Instead he described the sights in precise

60

Pilgrimage to the National Parks geological terms. . . . For Hayden the remarkable geysers and hot springs of the regions did not evoke images of Dante’s inferno, but were ‘nothing more than the closing stages of that wonder period of volcanic action that began in Tertiary times.’ Hayden detailed the vibrant colors created by mineral deposits and varying water temperatures at Mammoth Hot Springs with an eye for scientific accuracy rather than an ear for European metaphor.33

However, it seems the geologist actually did turn to metaphor quite frequently in his descriptions, sometimes simply repeating those that had been used by Langford and Doane, even in his scientific report. In addition, his report was illustrated not only with Jackson’s photographs, but also with Moran’s drawings. There was not a simple divide between aesthetics, the experience of the sublime, and scientific description. For Hayden science could fi nd the wonder in the natural world—volcanic action has the power of the sublime. But he also proclaims the aesthetic of the beautiful as he describes Yellowstone Lake: “The Lake lay before us, a vast sheet of quiet water, of a most delicate ultramarine hue, one of the most beautiful scenes I have ever beheld. . . . Such a vision is worth a lifetime.”34 Scientific language does not take away the power of the experience, but augments it. We see another version of this in an essay by Cornelius Hedges (the member of the campfi re story who was said to call for the creation of a public park). He saw the wonders of Yellowstone as being geologic, even as he named a wondrous natural attraction “Hell-Broth Springs.” Although “science has demoralized fancy . . . [w]e simply become conscious in the presence of these seething craters that volcanic forces and fi res were not yet extinct and might again burst forth in earthquaking and mountain heaving might and majesty.”35 The power of the natural world has a transcendent dimension and it is the ability of science to make us aware of it. The power of the landscape was expressed in both scientific and aesthetic language and both revealed the transcendent even as both were used to promote the wonders of the place as a sight to be seen and the railroad as the way to get there. These confl icting modes went hand in hand. But in these cultural constructions of Yellowstone, the idea of a public or national park is strangely absent. In spite of the Yellowstone campfire story, the evidence suggests that neither the Washburn-Doane Expedition nor the Hayden Survey worked to create a national park; rather, they were promoting the area as a place to visit or settle in. That is, until October 28, 1871, when Hayden received a letter from A.B. Nettleton, Jay Cooke’s associate: Dear Doctor: Judge Kelley [Congressman William Kelley of Philadelphia] has made a suggestion which strikes me as being an excellent one, viz: Let Congress

The Dream of Yellowstone 61 pass a bill reserving the Great Geyser Basin as a public park forever just as it has reserved that far inferior wonder the Yosemite Valley and big trees. If you approve this, would such a recommendation be appropriate in your official report?36 Hayden along with Langford began lobbying for the public park in November, presenting four hundred copies of Langford’s Moran-illustrated Scribner’s article to members of Congress and decorating the Capitol with watercolors by Moran, photographs by Jackson, and “curiosities” provided by Hayden.37 The cultural construction of Yellowstone spoke to the country with sufficient power that it was designated the fi rst national park in 1872. Moran completed his eight by twelve foot oil painting of The Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone soon after and within a month Congress had purchased it for $10,000—an astounding price at that time—to hang in the Capitol. The painting drew people as it became a marker of a marker (the canyon) that stood for the glory of the United States, both Wonderland and an industrial success. Thus, the fi rst national park was constructed through the work of scientists, government, the railroads, publishers, artists, and developers. At the point of its creation in 1872 it is clear that conservation was not the issue. Development was at the heart of the endeavor, with the beautiful and bizarre landscape of Wonderland the draw. Of course, for tourism to thrive, the wonders had to be preserved, so development and preservation were held in tension. However, the bill did little to ensure this and it would be many years before the language of conservation came to the fore. Meanwhile, the beautiful and bizarre were integrally a part of the wondrous landscape of Yellowstone. All those who created the Park did not manage to transform it from an inferno to “places of magnificence and wonder”;38 rather, we should say the “inferno,” the dark side, was a necessary part of the wonder. The place functioned as a sacred site because it could hold these conflicting visions in tension, mirroring central elements in late nineteenth-century American culture.

CIVILIZING NATURE Because the primary function of the Park was tourism rather than conservation for its own sake, the best way, it was thought, to control the frightening aspects of nature (as well as the social disorder they represented) was to “civilize” both the landscape and the experience. Yellowstone, and the West in general, drew easterners by its raw power and untamed wonders. But the desire was to experience these wonders from the protection of civilization. The early explorers spoke frequently of bringing civilization— meaning development—to Yellowstone. This was clearly not seen as inimical to the purpose of establishing the Park.

62 Pilgrimage to the National Parks Truman Everts, the member of the Washburn-Doane expedition who was lost for over a month, understandably had mixed feelings about Yellowstone, but said in a November 1871 Scribner’s article: “In the course of events the time is not far distant when the wonders of the Yellowstone will be made accessible to all lovers of sublimity, grandeur and novelty in natural scenery, and its majestic waters become the abode of civilization and refi nement.”39 Soon after the park bill was passed, Richard Watson Gilder, editor of Scribner’s, pointed to the anticipated role of the railroad not only in enabling his fellow citizens to travel in comfort, but in luring them to spend their money at home rather than abroad: “When the North Pacific road, as we are led to hope be the case, drops us in Montana in three days journey, we may be sure that the tide of summer touring will be perceptibly diverted from European fields, Yankee enterprise will dot the new Park with hostelries and furrow it with lines of travel.”40 The New York Times continued this pro-tourism approach in March 1873: “It is only necessary to render the Park easily accessible to make it the most popular summer resort in the country.” The concern, however, was that the area not be given over to “hucksters and hackmen as had happened at Niagara” in order that the Park be “a place of resort for cultivated persons.”41 Langford shows us the long-term prevalence of this idea when he says in his diary of the expedition that Yellowstone Lake “‘possesses adaptabilities for the highest display of artificial culture, amid the greatest wonders of Nature that the world affords.’” He adds, “It is dotted with islands of great beauty, as yet unvisited by man, but which at no remote period will be adorned with villas and the ornaments of civilized life.’” As Runte points out, because the diary was not published until 1905 (at which time it included the campfi re origin story), if the term “civilized” was inappropriate by that time, Langford could have omitted it, which he did not.42 Another tool that artists, scientists, and tourists used to civilize unknown lands, to make them comprehensible to human endeavors, was measurement. Art historian Barbara Novak, referring to nineteenth-century America, speaks of “a whole culture’s desire for certainty through measurement and statistics.”43 However, certainty was not the only benefit of measurement. “Part of the quest for facts and statistics was a taste for ‘Singularities’—for the unique features of a landscape, for the new and unusual, and therefore, the surprising.”44 Not only could measurement contain the morethan-human, it was also a useful tool to demonstrate the greatness and singularity of the wonders of the West, often in relation to Europe. Further, inexpressible wonders of height, abundance, vastness could be pointed to through measurement, leading to the mathematical or scientific “sublime.” Although these phrases appear contradictory, there was an aesthetic element to science and measurement was an enhancement to sublimity. We see this on a tourist level as Mary Richards, during her camping experience in Yellowstone in 1882, describes her experience of “The Grand Geyser of the World”:

The Dream of Yellowstone 63 The Grand throws its mighty column to the known height of four hundred feet, and almost unbrokenly for half the distance, when it parts and hundreds of gracefully curved jets spread still upward, for a few seconds lingering there and then breaking like shattered atoms of heaven’s pearly gates turning to ashy dross as earth is touched. We all gazed spell-bound at this glorious spectacle, which was repeated six times at intervals of two minutes. I was conscious that the lady by my side was timing the eruptions by her watch.45 Measurement—and by extension science and mathematics—provide both the way of containing the fearfulness of nature and of opening the experience of awe at the more-than-human. We learn of Mary Richards, a fifty-seven year old woman from New York City, through her memoir Camping Out in the Yellowstone. She was one who resisted the development and attempts to control nature she saw going on around her, even at that time, and was quite clear that she preferred the wild to the civilized. She and her husband had attempted a visit in 1877, but were turned back because of the Nez-Perce incident. These native peoples had been forced out of their ancestral homeland and, refusing to live on a reservation, were attempting to flee to Canada. As the army pursued them through Yellowstone, the Indians took several tourists hostage and travel to Yellowstone was discouraged. This did not deter Richards from returning five years later. She says as she ends her visit to the Park: “Tourists to ‘Wonderland’ in near future seasons can and will dispense with camping outfit. They will ‘do’ the tour in far less time in city clothes. The modern Hotel Fiend is now legally let loose by Uncle Sam in my arcadia. I know full well the followers in his train. Palatial cars will bear the traveler to the edge of the Park. . . . The tent will be folded and laid away and the camp fi re extinguished.” 46 More tourists, however, saw the “Hotel Fiend” as their friend, preferring comfort to roughing it—or at least comfort while claiming to be roughing it—and were delighted when the railroad reached Cinnebar just a year after Richards’ visit, making travel to the Park considerably easier, although travelers found even the “grand” hotel at Mammoth Hot Springs, completed in 1884, to be inadequate. In addition to the accommodations and food being less than the “luxury” that was advertised, the architecture disappointed those who were looking for a “western” experience. A tourist, “thrilled at being ‘at the threshold of the world’s wonderland, surrounded by mountain peaks and hemmed in by pine mantled ridge,’ was stunned to fi nd ‘a vision of verandas, of turrets, towers, and Juliet balconies.’”47 It was for the architect Robert Reamer, hired by Harry Child of the Yellowstone Park Association (which was closely tied to the Northern Pacific Railroad), to envision a hotel that satisfied the comfort needs of the tourists and that also fit the environment of Yellowstone. Old Faithful Inn, dubbed the largest log cabin in the world, was the result. It opened in 1904

64 Pilgrimage to the National Parks complete with electric lights and steam heat. Reamer was influenced by the developing “American aesthetic” which affi rmed an architecture that was simpler, more honest, and connected to the land.48 Chicago architect Louis Sullivan influenced the American aesthetic both by his architecture and his reflections. He called for an indigenous architecture in America, asserting that architecture reflects the culture, and our democracy is now stifled by feudal and monarchical forms.49 Both the forms and democracy will come spontaneously from Nature, he thought, if architects (and all citizens) live in harmony with the natural world to ensure good health and establish a democratic system of education to unify the active intellect and the active body. These ideas would lead to architecture that was simple, functional, and in harmony with its place in nature. However, David Andrew argues that, although Sullivan saw himself as “a democratic sage who had demonstrated that America was the true Promised Land” and that he could thus “assert a kind of unlimited citizenship in Nature herself,” he failed to see the discontinuities between his reliance on Nature and his delight and commitment to technological achievements.50 Thus Sullivan embodies the conflicting elements of affirmation of nature and commitment to American progress, which we also find in Reamer and others who create the architectural forms that become embodiments of the parks. Another dimension of the American aesthetic is seen in the arts and crafts movement of the early 1900s. Democratic in its aim and connecting healthy, moral living with the space one inhabited, the movement called for “simplified, wholesome environments.”51 Gustave Stickley popularized the movement with his Craftsman furniture—simple, solid furniture with rectilinear lines and unvarnished oak, which emphasized “honest handiwork and utility.”52 This was a turn not only from European styles, but also from the excess and ostentation of the “gilded age.” Interestingly, the movement managed to affi rm mass production along with its emphasis on natural simplicity in order to provide affordable, solid products to the many. When Robert Reamer was hired to design a hotel that would sit next to the iconic Old Faithful geyser, his Chicago training and California practice brought with them the values of the American aesthetic. We see this in his use of natural materials and an intentional consideration of how the building would fit the space, allowing the environment to shape the design and construction of the building. In the “rustic elegance” style this produced, we also see the tension between the values of a new, indigenous architecture tied to nature and the very American persistence of modern, industrial capitalism. Reamer’s goal was to reflect in the architecture of Old Faithful Inn the wild environment in which it was placed. He followed the new aesthetic in his building materials, using native stone and wood, and in the design, displaying structural features “honestly,” and as if they were part of the rock and forest of the place. His success in adapting the American aesthetic to Yellowstone is seen in how the Inn was received by tourists and how it was advertised. For the building to reflect its environment, it had to “harmonize

The Dream of Yellowstone 65 completely with its strange surroundings,” which the Northern Pacific brochure reported in 1904 that the building had achieved.53 As Thomas Murphy said of the Inn in his Three Wonderlands of the American West, “It is distinctly a product of the wilderness which surrounds it. . . . Massive, unhewn forest trees, rough boulders and undressed slabs are happily coordinated in the great structure, and everywhere gnarled, twisted branches— the strangest ever seen—have been fitted into some appropriate place.”54 And, conflating the built and unbuilt environment, the Inn was advertised in Olin Wheeler’s Wonderland as being “truly as much a product of the park as is the noble geyser from which it derives its name.”55 The interior displayed the structural features of the building with a huge lobby open to the ninety-three foot high roof, with log walls and beams showing and gnarled branches adorning the balconies and staircases that worked their way to the top. The central focus of the lobby was a massive chimney and four fi replaces in front of which was simple, solid furniture, inviting the guests to sit before the campfi re, just as the Washburn-Doane party did when they fi rst discovered Yellowstone. Clearly Reamer worked to create a feeling of the wild, the primitive, the natural. But the Inn was more than that. Tourists who stayed at the rustic Inn and were awed by nature in the form of Old Faithful geyser could renew their spirits as they experienced a premodern, authentic America. They could also experience the achievements of industrial America as they enjoyed the pleasures of

Figure 2.3 Traditional view of Old Faithful Inn, 1912. (Yellowstone Digital Slide Files 02782.)

66 Pilgrimage to the National Parks

Figure 2.4 Interior of Old Faithful Inn. Lantern slide by J.P. Clum. (Yellowstone Digital Slide Files 02776.)

comfortable beds, electricity, hot and cold running water, and gourmet meals, elegantly served. A 1909 visitor noted the uniqueness of this “rustic elegance,” “‘eating in a room that is the last expression of a lodge in some wilderness, where the latest French cookery tempts your appetite.’”56 Although Old Faithful Inn set the standard for rustic elegance, visitors to Yellowstone stayed in a variety of accommodations and addressed the Tour of the Park in a variety of ways. The renovation of the Lake Hotel was also designed by Reamer; however, the Northern Pacific and Yellowstone Park Association played it safe—just in case all the tourists were not drawn to the western experience. Reamer’s design evoked the neo-classical colonial style by adding three gables with fifty-foot tall Corinthian pillars. Various European elements were added as well and guests were pleasantly reminded of eastern and European lake resorts, with little sense of either the grandeur of the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone or the wonderland

The Dream of Yellowstone 67 of the geyser basins. Although the Lake Hotel did not receive the acclaim Old Faithful Inn did, it defi nitely had its loyal enthusiasts who appreciated the restful retreat it provided. On the other hand, there were those visitors, more like Mary Richards, who chose tent camps that allowed them to enjoy the independence of roughing it, even after the luxury hotels appeared. This was the West for them.57 Another group, usually unacknowledged, were the locals. Not part of the eastern elite, not prosperous enough or even of the mind-set to consider a train trip and tour, ranchers and farmers from the area came with camping gear in wagons drawn by farm animals for family play. The journal of M.A. Cruikshank reports her encounter with such families on her trip to the northern Rockies and notes, “It was really strange to see how perfectly this class appreciated the wonders of the place and how glad they were to leave for a while their hard labor for the adventurous, the beautiful, and the sublime.”58 A Park Service report from 1911 estimated that nearly fifty percent of Yellowstone travelers were locals.59 Although Ms Cruikshank may not have correctly interpreted the traveler’s intentions, they clearly did not require a return to the soil that some easterners saw as the benefit of the journey. There is not, then, one model that can be used for understanding the intentions or experience of visitors to Yellowstone. But to acknowledge the variety is to become aware of the manifold experiences the National Park was able to bring together in this American sacred space. We fi nd the lived experience of some of the conflicting values that were being experienced by many Americans. Even while simplicity and nature were being affirmed as the true American values and as the necessary foundation for the spiritual health and vigor of both the individual and the nation, the tourists were living out of the prosperity and technological developments the modern world of industrial capitalism made possible. Was the clash apparent? Did it cause tourists to rethink their values? Or, by providing an experience that appeared to hold the two in a coherent whole, did the pilgrimage to Yellowstone actually reinforce the deception, the belief in an ideal that could only be real in Wonderland?

NATURE AND TECHNOLOGY The confl icting responses toward urban, industrial America—praising it as sign of America’s greatness and mission, fearing it and the urban culture it helped to create and critiquing it as destructive of true American culture—both fi nd their way into Yellowstone National Park’s story. Cecelia Tichi argues that in spite of the transformation of Yellowstone’s image thanks to the Northern Pacific’s efforts, images of hell and the demonic persisted. The reason for this, she suggests in a convoluted, but interesting argument, lies in other images of hell that were developing in

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relation to the Industrial Age. Like Yellowstone, factory cities like Pittsburgh could represent both the greatness and progress of America and the dangerous, hellish power of men and machines it unleashed on American culture. Not only does Tichi see this parallel—of wonders and the demonic—between Yellowstone and Pittsburgh, she sees a more literal parallel in the power of the geysers and that used in the factories and describes, in her essay “Pittsburgh at Yellowstone,” Old Faithful geyser as an icon of industrial America. Tichi claims that underlying this comparison, and central to American culture in the Industrial Age, is what Mark Seltzer in Bodies and Machines calls the “‘double discourse of the natural and the technological.’” Bringing together the mechanistic and the organic, Old Faithful models the values of the age. We see this dual imagery, for example, as observers compare Old Faithful’s regular eruptions both to the pulsations of the heart and the regularity of a clock. She claims this fits with Seltzer’s argument that “ideology was convertible into biology in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, with the previous distinction ‘between the life process and the machine process’ now collapsed.” This conflation of humans and machines was necessary to create a coherent world view that could value both “man” and machine as the industrial age required. If . . . a man must realize “that he is a machine,” then the geophysical expression of that machine body becomes Old Faithful geyser. . . . Old Faithful in this sense is a synecdoche of the valorized body of the industrial era—a body understood as a machine whose pulse must be regular as clockwork. This body is male, in that the realm of heavy industry was gendered masculine. . . . Such expression of male virility is fully consonant with the new industrial ethos of the later nineteenth century, and Old Faithful thus exemplified the ideals of an industrial society organized for maximal rationalized production. 60 I would, moreover, note that this interesting and contradictory merging of humans and machine and nature and machine also implies a merging of humans and nature in the “body” of Yellowstone, which establishes kinship between Americans and this American realm of wonder. However, the darkness of the image dominates as the machine side of both humans and nature is stressed. Conflating the organic and mechanical, the human and machine, was the epitome of the dangers of mechanized, dehumanized life in the factories, in the cities. Although the technological was closely connected to the American dream of progress, it also threatened many of the values national parks were said to embody. Building on this foundation of a double discourse of nature and technology, appropriate to the industrial age, if not, at fi rst glance, to a national park, Tichi notes various descriptions of Yellowstone that “collapse the boundaries between the two worlds of nature’s wonderland and

The Dream of Yellowstone 69 technological industrialism.” Some of these descriptions made direct comparisons of Yellowstone to the city of Pittsburgh, others to “‘the exhaust of a steam-engine, and . . . the rattle and crash and buzz and whirring of a cotton-mill.’”61 She fi nds examples of this conflation in John Muir’s 1901 essay on Yellowstone, especially striking because of his strong conservationist approach. In addition to images of nature and technology, I would add we fi nd the collapse of boundaries between the wonderful and demonic. Muir, for example, says of the hot springs, it is “as if a fi erce furnace fi re were burning beneath each one of them; and a hundred geysers, white torrents of boiling water and steam, like inverted waterfalls, are ever and anon rushing up out of the hot, black underworld.” He describes his fi rst sight of a geyser basin as a multitude of white columns, broad, reeking masses, and irregular jets and puffs of misty vapor ascending from the bottom of the valley, or entangled like smoke among the neighboring trees, suggesting the factories of some busy town or the camp-fires of an army. . . . And when you saunter into the midst of them over the bright sinter pavements, and see how pure and white and pearly gray they are in the shade of the mountains, and how radiant in the sunshine, you are fairly enchanted. So numerous they are and varied, Nature seems to have gathered them from all the world as specimens of her rarest fountains, to show in one place what she can do.62

Figure 2.5 Geyser Hill, Upper Geyser Basin, 1977. Photograph by J. Schmidt (Yellowstone Digital Slide Files 06581.)

70 Pilgrimage to the National Parks This mixture of images reveals uncertainties about the industrial age. Old Faithful might be regular in its eruptions, but most of the geysers were not. Muir captures the pleasure and the anxiety they produced: “all of them . . . faithfully rising and sinking in fairy rhythmic dance night and day . . . at varying periods . . . growing up rapidly, uncontrollable as fate.”63 Similarly, the industrial East appeared uncontrollable and frightening as strikes and riots erupted at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries. The discourse surrounding industrial America included its images of inferno, reflecting what George Beard in 1881 called “American Nervousness.” “While Frederick Jackson Turner affirmed the westward path of civilization as ‘the steady growth of a complex nervous system,’ Beard blamed that same civilization for over-taxing the body’s neural system in a world thought to engender a host of diseases, including consumption and neurasthenia, the etiology found in the fast-paced temporal pressures of cities and industrial plants and the age itself.”64 One of the many complex reasons behind the establishment of public parks was to provide a refuge from these diseases and protect lands from becoming part of the industrial milieu. That Yellowstone would bear the image of industry while carrying both the power and progress of the industrial age and the fears and anxieties this age aroused shows again how the demonic and wonderful were held together in the Park. With the literal reminder of the industrial age present in the power of Yellowstone’s natural features, tourists could not just escape to Wonderland, leaving the world of the cities behind. As a pilgrimage site, Yellowstone embodied the value issues at the heart of late nineteenth-century American culture—and at least created the possibility of tourists reflecting on these dilemmas through the power—both demonic and wonderful—of the National Park.

Part II

See America First

Introduction to Part II The Age of Anxiety

When the Grand Canyon was designated a National Park in 1919, Charles Lummis, who had been a fan of the Grand Canyon since his “Tramp Across the Continent” in 1892, proclaimed this place to be America’s sacred shrine: “The Grand Canyon Bids you! Come, all ye Peoples of the Earth, to witness God’s boldest and most flaming Signature across Earth’s face! Come—and penitent—ye of the US, to marvel upon this chiefest Miracle of our own land!”1 In his 1892 book he had lamented that American travelers “care so little to see the wonders of their own land. . . . It is a crying shame that any American who is able to travel at all should fail to see nature’s masterpiece upon this planet before he gads abroad to visit scenes that would not make a visible scratch upon its walls.”2 Lummis is speaking with the voice of the “See America First” campaign, a combination of economic boosterism and nationalism that officially became a tourism slogan in 1905 when Fisher Sanford Harris, of the Salt Lake City Commercial Club proclaimed, “See Europe If You Will. But See America First.”3 The Great Northern Railroad took on the “See America First” brand in 1910 to promote newly designated Glacier National Park, where the railroad was the chief concessionaire. A few years later as the Department of Interior was pushing for the creation of the National Park Service as a government division to oversee all the parks, this slogan was used at the Panama-Pacific International Exposition, where replicas of several national parks were presented. It was after the National Park Service (NPS) was established in 1916 and used the slogan, giving government sanction to the nationalistic dimension of seeing America fi rst, that Lummis’ proclamation expressed the national and the religious dimensions of the sacred space of the Grand Canyon. The “See America First” slogan played an important role in shaping the development of the national parks, and promoted nationalism connected with both religion and the importance of growth. The America we were supposed to see fi rst was the West. Marguerite Shaffer notes that travel in the East was termed “vacation,” while travel in the West was “tourism,” which was a “cultural practice that rested on the inscription of national identity in the built and the natural environment.” Booster Harris portrayed the West as the last place where Americans

74 Pilgrimage to the National Parks could experience the beauty and “‘soul-uplifting qualities of outdoor life.’” Overworked people from the crowded cities were feeling “‘the irresistible call of the wild,’” which the western landscape could answer.4 The religious dimension was present in the West’s mythic power, associated with America as the New World, the origin and continuing source of America’s greatness. The magnificence of the land in the national parks was a sure sign of God’s blessings on this Chosen People to whom this great land had been given. The exclusiveness of who had been placed among the Chosen is blatantly seen in Albert Bushnell Hart’s comments soon after the turn of the century. Writing under the banner of “See America First,” Hart said, “We of the United States arrogate to ourselves the sole right to be called ‘America.’ Native Indians, frosty Eskimos, descendants of Spanish and Portuguese who arrived decades before the Pilgrim Fathers—all these are set aside in order that we may be ‘The Americans.’”5 The logic apparently is that the United States, with its Anglo founders, is the progeny of the land and/or that God gave the Pilgrims’ descendants fi rst rights to the land. In either case, the western campaign contained an antiethnic bias with a focus on native and Hispanic people who might claim prior ownership (though certainly not to exclude the African Americans who had been brought by force to this New World or more recent immigrants who were thronging American cities at this time). That makes it all the more interesting—and complicated—that a group of non-Anglos whom Hart had clearly excluded, the Native Americans, came to symbolize the New World embodied in the parks, as native peoples became associated with the West and the Vanishing Redman became a signifier of the primal time of America’s origins. The refuge provided by the parks represented at this time a world untouched by the forces of business and industry, labor unrest, and urbanizing of the environment. Here eastern Americans could reinvigorate themselves, reviving their spirits and becoming better Americans. This vision of who could take refuge and revive themselves in the parks was stridently exclusive, even while always claiming to be an embodiment of American democracy. Not only the non-Anglo-Americans mentioned above were excluded: only the affluent could afford to see America fi rst. But even among these “chosen,” the parks represented many different Americas (even, sometimes, for the same people). They could at the same time stand for the greatness of America over Europe, for democracy in the midst of capitalist elitism, for progress and development, and for American nature untouched, source of strength and/or the sublime that people had lost touch with. Both development and pristine nature were seen to be embodied in the same place, which is one source of the parks’ power in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, as they mirrored the confl icts of their time—and possibly provided ways of dealing with these confl icts. Late nineteenth and early twentieth century America has been labeled the Gilded Age, a description intended to indicate the pretense and falseness of the time and the lack of real life, the name being given by those who saw themselves as outside of this opulent but lifeless culture. In fact,

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it seems that a great many felt outside of it; dissatisfaction permeated all levels of society from the intellectual elites to the laborers. This period was generally one of prosperity and progress—but also of urban poverty and displacement. Industrialism was taking off in a new way, fi rst with the railroads, and then more generally as corporate business began, at fi rst without many noticing, to replace the heroic individual entrepreneur.6 Prosperity was physically demonstrated in ample bodies. Historian of American religion Catherine Albanese notes the “Medical historians tell us that dyspepsia, or indigestion, was a national ill, and the record contains a host of caricatures of Americans, with gargantuan appetites, gulping down plates of greasy animal food and alcohol.”7 If the body was unsettled, so too was the mind, and “neurasthenia” was its disease—nervousness, anxiety, a sense of groundlessness. Why, when everything appeared so good, was the age so troubled? As America developed into a modern nation, change dominated, disrupting the perceived sense that traditional values held together a homogeneous society in which the individual was yet valued. The ways people attempted to deal with this malaise were many and various; however, what many shared in common was discontent with the modern, industrial, capitalist society—that they also so deeply believed in and sought to promote—and an affi rmation of nature (though constructed in many different ways) as offering a life-giving alternative. Related to both of these was a sense that something that had made America great had been lost. In various groups and various forms of expression we see the urge to experience life more fully and intensely and to break out of the pettiness of everyday economic life, and at the same time the longing for a less chaotic life, for order amidst the fragmenting change of industrial society. Both of these dynamics were mirrored in the national parks, as we saw in the previous chapter at Yellowstone. The parks embodied the various confl icting hopes and fears and the search for the America that had been lost. T.J.Jackson Lears uses the term “antimodernism” to describe one form of response to the dis-ease of the time. He defines it as the “recoil from an ‘overcivilized’ modern existence to more intense forms of physical or spiritual experience supposedly embodied in medieval or Oriental culture.” He goes on to say, The antimodern impulse stemmed from revulsion against the process of rationalization first described by Max Weber—the systematic organization of economic life for maximum productivity and of individual life for maximum personal achievement: the drive for efficient control of nature under the banner of improving human welfare; the reduction of the world to a disenchanted object to be manipulated by rational technique.8 “Overcivilization” was a term used by some to call into question this commodification of ideas, control of natural physical responses, the softness and banality of modern life with its devotion to material possessions, meaningless complexities of urban, industrial society, and disconnection

76 Pilgrimage to the National Parks from nature. This response came largely from the intellectual elites who felt themselves and their culture being marginalized. The growing power of business and industrialization and the domination of the discourse of economics were enemies of what they saw as true American culture. Another threat, not always made explicit, but perhaps a necessary corollary to this rejection of the contemporary social order, lay in the developing labor class and the great influx of immigrants, who seemed to some to threaten true American culture as well. One response of the intellectual elite was an Arnoldian turn to “culture” and “tradition”—with England as a shining model. The understanding of culture as “high culture” was developing. This would relegate moral and aesthetic sensibilities to one class and exclude them from another. Emerson was a leading light for them, but not the Emerson of the 1837 “American Scholar” Harvard address, who had spoken of the necessity of America leaving behind the culture of Europe and developing its own, common culture. In 1867 he again addressed Harvard—notably the Phi Beta Kappa Society—on “The Progress of Culture.” Although he began by affi rming the teeming culture of emigrant America which was fi lled with “possibilities” and a “new spirit,” he went on to appeal to his audience as the “scholars and idealists as in a barbarous age” who alone had the power “to hold up the Republic.” It only takes, he said, the “contemporaneous appearance of a few superior and attractive men, to give a new and noble turn to the public mind.”9 We will see signs of this more elitist culture in the parks in the development of elaborate resorts which sometimes included orchestras, reading rooms, and art collections and often an atmosphere of moral rectitude. Others like Whitman had another vision of America in which culture would be rejuvenated through true democratization. In 1871 he wrote in Democratic Vistas, with the word “‘Culture’ . . . we fi nd ourselves abruptly in close quarters with the enemy. . . . As now taught, accepted and carried out, are not the processes of culture rapidly creating a class of supercilious infidels, who believe in nothing?” What is needed instead is “a programme of culture, drawn out, not for a single class alone, or for the parlors or lecture-rooms, but with an eye to practical life, the west, the working-men . . . , and the broad range of the women.” He appeals to the “new Poetry” that develops true American character and enables democracy to succeed.. For this “prophetic literature” to thrive, “Nature must become fully restored” in it.10 Architect Louis Sullivan, who was influential in park architecture, venerated Whitman and his ideas on democracy and believed it would be he, the architect (who, he said must also be a poet), who would bring about this revitalized character.11 The Chautauqua movement added its version of democracy as its leaders affirmed culture for all. By the late nineteenth century the “self-education movement” spread among the middle class, based on the belief that a revitalization of American culture was possible through education

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and the world of class was no inhibitor to culture (though the audience was primarily middle class). William James, however, in “What Makes Life Significant?” argued the culture promoted by the Chautauqua movement was insufficient, in fact was a hindrance to actual, significant living. The safety, stability, refi nement of the Chautauqua ideal was without the intensity, the mystery, the darkness of real life. “Culture and refi nement all alone are not enough” to redeem life from insignificance. James fi nds in “the common life of common men” the “great fields of heroism” that will sustain us.12 Although James looked to the fields and factories for the “pluck and will” he saw lacking in overcivilized America, others looked to the West, paradigmatically to the parks, not only to see, but to live, as Theodore Roosevelt would say, “the strenuous life”—and thereby develop the character false culture had drained away. We will see these contestations over democracy and culture being played out in the parks as many architects who designed the early resorts trained under Sullivan or felt his influence in Chicago—the same resorts, to be sure, which seemed to preclude democracy with their elaborate and costly venues. Further, the very notion of a tour, which was the way most visited the parks, was understood to be enlightening as well as pleasurable; and with the National Park Service, education became the center of the ritual pilgrimage, with education understood as an active process that occurred in the out-of-doors. A related effort to overcome the dis-ease of and to control the chaotic social order focused on the body. Health movements of various kinds flourished in the last half of the nineteenth century, from Christian physiology to homeopathy, water cures to chiropractic. As Albanese notes in Nature Religion in America, a continuing theme in American religious history in relation to nature—the body in this case—is a confl icting movement back and forth between controlling nature (the body) and living in harmony with it.13 As an antidote to modern, industrial society, focusing on the body was both a way of harmonizing with nature—revitalizing oneself and regaining the intensity that had been lost in the mechanization of society—and a way of controlling the disorder that was everywhere threatening in the changing, chaotic world. Outdoor exercise and developing a strong body to develop a strong character were also seen as antidotes to overcivilization. Theodore Roosevelt looked to the West, and to the national parks as places to live the “strenuous life” and thereby develop the manly virtues lost in industrialized society. The “Red Man” was sometimes seen as “the apostle of outdoor life,”14 representing the primitive premodern who lived the authentic life close to nature. This leads to a fi nal example of these varied and contradictory ways of making sense of life in industrial America, which can be described as a turn to the “other.” This could be, and very often was in the parks, a turn to the simple life, the rustic life, the life in nature, away from the complexities and overindulgence of urban society. We will see this in rustic hotel

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architecture and furnishings as well as travel away from the city to “wild” lands. This draw toward the other is also seen in the mystic of the “Orient” or the fabled past of Europe. Rather surprisingly, we will see this “Oriental” influence in the West, with, for example, the naming of the strange features of the Grand Canyon and the Japanese lanterns that adorned the Great Northern’s hotels in Glacier National Park. The “display” of Native Americans in Glacier and Grand Canyon also served this purpose. In spite of all these varied attempts to fi nd authentic life apart from the industrial focus that dominated the society, Lears asserts that the culture’s unquestioned foundation remained “faith in the beneficence of material progress,”15 which included valuing technology and industrialization as means to that end, a faith in science as the means of unlocking the secrets of nature for human ends, and an optimism that all this was possible for all Americans. Further, in playing the primitive authentic against modernity’s inauthenticity in order to devise a better modern, “The two positions—modernism and antimodernism—were, in effect, two sides of the same coin,” according to Phil Deloria.16 No surprise that there are contradictions, then; and we fi nd in the construction and interpretation of the parks the dominant values of the age and signs of the anxieties these values aroused, as well as the assertion of alternative values. The parks could serve as a refuge from the complexity of urban life or as a place to celebrate the triumphs of technological America. The return to and affi rmation of nature was interpreted by some to be in opposition to the life of the city, by others to indicate industrialization could go on without destroying America’s grand nature, and by others to affi rm the importance of nature to renew the spirits of Americans so they could rededicate themselves to the mission of America to increase material prosperity. What did it mean to “See America First” in this time of affirmations of the age of progress and protests against it? The parks served as an American icon that could stand as a bulwark against the shortcomings and dangers of industrial society and at the same time affi rm the greatness of America and provide a haven for its citizens. The development of the Grand Canyon and Glacier National Parks as pilgrimage sites fi rst by the railroads and then by the National Park Service demonstrates two different versions of national parks as refuges from the anxieties of modern American industrial life.

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Although the nation and the parks are always associated, as we saw, for example, in Olmsted’s ideas on democracy, in Yosemite’s wonders being asserted as a sign of America’s being superior to Europe, and in Yellowstone’s being described as revealing the greatness of America, the “See America First” campaign is exemplary of this tendency. First the railroads and then the federal government urged travel to America’s wonders as requisite to good citizenship and the way to reconnect with America’s primal powers. We will focus on Grand Canyon and Glacier to examine the literal and symbolic construction of the national parks that occurred in this time of prosperity and anxiety and how their construction mirrored and responded to issues of the larger culture. In both the Southwest and the Northwest Native Americans, in very different ways, played significant roles in reconnecting to a time and place of harmony and wholeness.

CREATING THE “TITAN OF CHASMS” The Great Chasm of the Southwest, later called the Grand Canyon, provided an empty space, a void, into which was poured an ideal, imaginary America, created out of late nineteenth, early twentieth century anxieties, which reinforced in a new way the connection between land, nation, and people. The remarkable transformation of the Canyon from Great Unknown and Great Wasteland to the representative paradigm of the spectacular American landscape or, as one commentator put it, “an official shrine of science, culture, history, and God”1 occurred through the interactions of the mixed desires of tourists and concessionaires, architects and scientists, artists and the Atchison, Topeka, Santa Fe Railway (ATSF)—as well as the great chasm itself and its ancient inhabitants. The construction of the Grand Canyon was an even greater imaginative leap than was required at Yosemite or Yellowstone. The entire Southwest posed a problem for developers: there were few inviting forests or waterfalls; not even the dynamic, if bizarre, water features of Yellowstone offered a respite from the hot, dry, seemingly lifeless desert.

80 Pilgrimage to the National Parks In 1869 when John Wesley Powell led a government survey party down the Colorado River and through the canyon, he called the area “The Great Unknown,” an appropriate name—from the Anglo point of view—for the whole region of the Southwest, which had been explored by Coronado in the sixteenth century, well before the English colonized the Northeast, but which had remained “unknown” to most Anglo-Americans even after the conquest of Mexico and the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848 brought the area into the Arizona Territory. When the fi rst survey teams entered the area in the 1850s they called the area the “great wasteland of the Southwest”; and Sir Richard Burton, an enthusiast for the American West, refused to travel through the area on his way to California in 1860, calling it “The vilest and most desolate portion of the West.”2 Powell’s enthusiastic reports in Scribner’s stirred up some public interest in the Canyon and the site became better known after Thomas Moran joined the survey in 1873 and painted The Chasm of the Colorado, which was purchased by Congress in 1874 and hung beside his famous Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone. This painting did not receive the same acclaim as did his Yellowstone painting, again indicating the difficulty people had in “getting to know” the landscape; and even after the ATSF began promoting the Southwest in the late 1880s, few visitors took the hot eleven-hour trip in a freight wagon from Flagstaff. As Gertrude Stevens wrote in the registry in 1893, “This is a warm place. . . . I fainted when I saw this awful looking cañon. I never wanted a drink so bad in my life.”3 Although well-known travel writer Charles Dudley Warner thought the Canyon was “the most sublime of all earthly spectacles,” he nonetheless acknowledged in 1891 that “To the eye educated to any other, it may be shocking, grotesque, incomprehensible.”4 In 1882 Clarence Dutton, chief geologist with Powell in the 1870s, gave his understanding of this phenomenon in his published report, Tertiary History of the Grand Canyon District: The lover of nature, whose perceptions have been trained in the Alps . . . or New England, . . . in Scotland or Colorado, would enter this strange region with a shock, and dwell there for a time with a sense of oppression, and perhaps with horror. . . . But time would bring a gradual change. Some day he would suddenly become conscious that outlines which at fi rst seemed harsh and trivial have grace and meaning; that forms which seemed grotesque are full of dignity. . . . Great innovations, whether in art or literature, in science or in nature, seldom take the world by storm. They must be understood before they can be estimated, and must be cultivated before they can be understood. It is so with the Grand Cañon. 5 Dutton’s book became a way of educating the public to this new type of scenery. And gradually both promoters and tourists began to learn to feel

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the draw of the Southwest and to see the Chasm as a wonderland that enshrined the ideals of America. As Marta Weigle and Barbara Babcock note, the process by which this happened would be called by Dean MacCannell, “‘sight sacralization,’ whereby an undistinguished site is rendered an attraction worthy of sightseeing.”6 This occurs by the ritualistic naming of what is to be enshrined. This understanding does not ignore the reality of what is being named, in this case, an opening in the earth over a mile deep, up to eighteen miles wide, and two hundred seventy miles long, as the Colorado River flows. Although imaginative construction is always involved in site/ sight sacralization, the physical space necessarily shapes and is woven into the story. Even though efforts to make the Grand Canyon a national park began in 1886 with then Senator Benjamin Harrison, this did not happen until 1919, though it had federal designations of forest reserve status in 1893, game reserve in 1906, and National Monument in 1908.7 Thus, by the time the Grand Canyon had become a national park, much of the sight sacralization had already occurred—under the direction of the railroad and concessionaires. The beginnings of its construction as an American wonder are surprisingly similar to those in Yellowstone in the major role played by a railroad, in this case, the ATSF and its lodging and restaurant associate the Fred Harvey Company. Their physical developments and advertising created the Grand Canyon as the “Titan of Chasms” and “The Greatest Thing in the World.” Thus began what Weigle and Babcock call the “ostensibly natural, commercially constructed Great Southwest.”8 The railroad played the “See America First” theme, calling on Americans to recognize the greatness of their culture through the greatness of their landscape. Similar to the earlier parks, science and art both served to reveal and make comprehensible the wonders of God’s creation in America. Moran contributed to this by selling the rights to his painting of the Canyon to the ATSF to be used in their advertising.9 As in Yosemite and to some extent in Yellowstone, the language of ruins was used to indicate ancient geological and botanical forms that could compete in age and size with historical ruins of ancient Europe and Asia: the geological display of the canyon, it was said, revealed the history of the earth. However, in the case of the Southwest “ruins” came to include actual architectural sites as well and, more importantly, the idea of “living ruins” which was applied to the native peoples of the area. The importance of Native Americans as a symbol of primal America adds a new dimension to national parks as American shrines, which, as we will see, is followed in Glacier and later in Yosemite National Parks.

Living Ruins That the Southwest was not immediately amenable to the American imagination is no surprise. Not only was the desert lacking in the forested

82 Pilgrimage to the National Parks mountains and waterfalls that made for dramatic scenery and inhospitable to many forms of life, including humans, it was also foreign territory. The region had become part of the U.S. with the signing of the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848, which made citizens of a group of people with architecture, customs, history, and religion that were not part of the Protestant story that had framed U.S. society. Spanish and, even more, native traditions were slow to be admired by the Anglos. The Native Americans in the area had either developed interactions with the Spanish, including marriage, or had remained separate from the Spanish mission movement and had maintained their traditional cultures at a time when the Native Americans in many parts of the U.S. had been moved to reservations and children sent to boarding schools in order to acculturate them to white society. Nonetheless, it was this very exotic otherness that became the draw that was used to attract people to the Southwest, with the twist that the “other” was made part of the U.S. identity story. This was perhaps encouraged by the fact that these Native Americans had not been involved in the Indian wars and were seen as a peaceful people; and their association with agriculture played out the longstanding American myth of the Jeffersonian farmer. In any case, these native peoples, newly constructed by Fred Harvey and the Santa Fe, became the lure that attracted tourists to the Southwest. Only after this did the landscape and the Canyon come to be seen as Grand. Although the geological ruins were—and came to be more—important, the railroads could display actual architectural ruins—Spanish churches and Native American dwellings and artifacts, as well as the “living ruins” in the form of the indigenous peoples who were there, living, it was thought, as they had been since ancient times. Science and the survey mentality contributed to the construction of Indians as attractions. The western expeditions had discovered there were people to study as well as flora and fauna and the Bureau of Ethnology was established in 1879 to “capture” these cultures before they disappeared. Ethnologists directed their attention particularly toward the Zuni and Hopi groups in the Southwest. These Pueblos had been outside the scope of Spanish missionization and continued to retain much of their independence after the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. They appeared, therefore, most “primitive,” most untouched by the civilization of the white man and thus of great interest to the anthropologists. Because these “salvage” anthropologists were interested in their “primitive” traits, any signs of change were ignored.10 It was understood that these ancient people could not stand the onslaught of civilization and were therefore disappearing; the goal of the anthropologists was to preserve—salvage—them in this last moment of authentic existence. And the tourist was invited to join in this timeless moment. This scientific interest in the disappearing “other” meshed with the antimodern fascination with exotic cultures, often sought in the Far East, but which could be found more readily in the Southwest. The ATSF and the Fred Harvey Company used this model to bring tourists and Indians together.

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As cultural studies scholar Leah Dilworth says in Imagining Indians in the Southwest, The Fred Harvey Company, with the ATSF railroad, “through its tourist attractions and publications, fostered a remarkably coherent— and persistent—version of the Southwest as a region inhabited by peaceful, pastoral people, ‘living ruins’ from the childhood of civilization.” Indians were presented as “ruins, ritualists, and artisans; that is, Native Americans were represented as people doomed to vanish or as living relics of the past, as performers of colorful ceremonies, and as makers of pots, baskets, blankets, and jewelry.”11 These characteristics appealed to tourists, who were uncomfortable with the rootlessness of their modern industrial society and were longing for tradition and permanence. Indians were understood to live simple lives in which they maintained unchanged their archaic traditions and values. Dean MacCannell, in his study of late modern society The Tourist, suggests the search for meaning in this time of malaise creates the tourist, who seeks out authenticity. “For moderns, reality and authenticity are thought to be elsewhere: in other historical periods and other cultures, in purer, simpler life-styles.”12 Leah Dilworth similarly argues that “primitivism is a reactionary response. In the face of industrialization it values the preindustrial. In the face of irony and alienated individualism, it values sincerity and communality.”13 These are to be found in the primitive “other.” When the “real” and “authentic” seem to disappear in urban industrial life, the Indian offers a glimpse of what has been lost. George Wharton James, calling in 1908 for Roosevelt’s “strenuous life,” says, “I call upon the white race to incorporate into its civilization the good things of the Indian civilization; to forsake the injurious things of its pseudo-civilized, artificial, and over-refi ned life, and to return to the simple, healthful, and natural life which the Indians largely lived.” James refers to ethnologist Jesse Fewkes who did field work among the Hopi in the 1890s, interpreting their kachinas as part of the “‘almost universal idea of primitive man . . . that prayers should be addressed to personations of the beings worshipped.’”14 Establishing them as representatives of “primitive man” out of whom we have successfully developed, James wants his readers to appreciate their reverence for powers beyond. Even though he acknowledges their “superstitious fear,” he affi rms that “The Indian’s every-day attitude is one of reverence for the Powers above.” White Americans have lost this natural reverence as they have succumbed to rationalism and materialism. Similarly, they lack the natural vitality of the Indian. “He lives out of doors; not only does his body remain in the open, but his mind, his soul, are ever also there.”15 Dilworth describes James’s “Indian corner”—a collection of Indian baskets which for him embodied “the knowledge and way of life of their makers; through the basket one could know the Indian and, more important, preserve a disappearing way of life.” She goes on to say that his Indian corner “recapitulated the structure of imperial conquest and embodied

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nostalgia for what imperialism had destroyed. As in the touristic encounter, which reenacted a kind of Columbian moment, the collector-connoisseur reenacted a fantasy of discovery and exchange that hinged on a desire to possess objects from vanishing culture.”16 Thus, not only is there a sense of learning from our ancestors, but coincidentally, a setting them apart from us as what is both lost and inferior. Alan Trachtenberg argues that “Civilization required a savagery against which to distinguish itself.”17 This elevation of the exotic other who has been controlled by colonization and is seen as fascinating, but inferior, the primitive to which we are the civilized, is parallel to what Edward Said has labeled “Orientalism,” referring to western European construction of the “others” of the Middle East and South and East Asia to play a role that supported western empires. Clearly, the display of Native Americans in the Southwest was a form of “Orientalism,” as Edward Said defi nes it.18 The inferiority of the colonized Other is never in doubt; nonetheless the Other fascinates both because it is seen as exotic and, in the case of native peoples, because it carries the roots of American origins, including something that our modern world has lost. Before Indians could serve as the colonized, exotic other, they had to be named and called out of their savage or invisible standing. “Indians” were not part of the sight sacralization until near the turn of the century and thus were not available for consumption. An 1889 guidebook to the Southwest, for example, hardly mentions Indians.19 Interestingly, the discourse that was used to make them available was literally the discourse of Orientalism. As Earl Pomeroy notes, “Travelers passing the Pueblo villages of the Southwest in the eighties were invited to recall the villages of ancient Egypt and Nubia, Nineveh and Babylon, rather than to study the remnants of American aboriginal life.”20 Into the early 1900s, as Marta Weigle and Barbara Babcock have pointed out, advertising for the ATSF and Fred Harvey Company “compared Navajo blankets to Oriental rugs” and “called Navajo men ‘keen-eyed Bedouins.’”21 Even George Wharton James, who strongly promoted admiration for native peoples asserts in What the White Race Can Learn from the Indian, that there is no insanity among Indians because of their outdoor life, and goes on to refer to Emerson’s idea that Orientals let their insane wander outdoors for curative purposes. 22 Scientists too participated in this construction as anthropologist Frank H. Cushing observed at Zuni Pueblo in 1879, “how strangely parallel have been the lines of development in this curious civilization of an American desert, with those of Eastern nations and deserts,”23 establishing connections between biblical lands and America. As both Puritans and Mormons had done earlier, this connection served to hallow the land of America. In this case Native Americans were appropriated to serve the Anglo-American story, denying them a reality of their own. But, as Weigle and Babcock note, “the Southwest is America’s Orient”24 and gradually the language of the Orient fell away as “Indians” were used to construct Anglo-American Orientalism—their own discourse of empire.

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The railroad was called the “Empire Builder”; the West was America’s empire; and Native Americans came to play the role of the colonized, exotic other. It was for the ATSF and the Fred Harvey Company to make them into a spectacle that would serve the tourists in their quest for meaning and authenticity, as well as creating a successful business for the companies. The Fred Harvey Company and the ATSF worked together in the creation of this discourse, hiring artists and ethnologists to provide inspiration and information as foundation for the spectacle. By telling the story of the lives of these vanishing people, aesthetically and ethnographically, they would draw the tourists into this constructed “other.” This would entice them to travel to the Southwest to observe Indians at work on their weaving and basket-making at stations along the railroad line or in the Indian Museum in Albuquerque and make them eager to buy their productions to take home as souvenirs of the Southwest, as relics of the authentic life. Counting on “The Indian” to sell their enterprises, “They devised an advertising system featuring Indian faces, artwork, and southwestern landforms on publicity materials; museums housing Indian artifacts and paintings of far western scenery, and station and hotel buildings built in Spanish and Indian styles.”25 The Harvey Company also “sought authenticity and prestige through hiring eminent curators and ethnographers”26 to manage the Indian artifacts, demonstrating their concern for scientific authenticity as well. The Indian became the icon through which commerce was profitable, science was advanced, and tourists were given the spiritual experience of authentic reality. When the railroad completed its spur to the Canyon in 1901 the Indian spectacle came to the Canyon. Whereas the touristic attractions that had enticed Americans to Yosemite and Yellowstone were scenery and landscape, now Native Americans were treated as if they were scenery, part of the landscape, which could be observed and admired by the tourist. Fred Harvey built the El Tovar Hotel, providing luxury and a view of the Canyon, as well as access to “primordial America.” Hopi House was built in 1905 next to the El Tovar Hotel, and artifacts from the Harvey collection were displayed there, as were native peoples creating their wares. Hopi House was designed by Mary Ellen Colter, an architect for the Fred Harvey Company,who had studied at the California School of Design—another group searching for the “American aesthetic.” Reflecting the American Craftsman philosophy of Stickley, Colter and other architects of the Southwest held “the pristine purity of simplicity” as an ideal. Rather than looking to European sources, they turned to the American Indian as their model. 27 Thus, while Colter sought to have all her buildings be in harmony with the landscape and used native materials, she also sought “authenticity” in her work by studying pueblos in the region and engaging Hopi workers in the construction. Hopi House was primarily modeled on the pueblo at Oraibi, Arizona, although it was an amalgam of several Southwest living styles. 28 George Wharton James describes the building as “a

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Figure 3.1 “Gee! We are going to see real, live Indians,” 1929. (ATSF advertisement.)

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Figure 3.2 Native Artisans Demonstrate at Hopi House, 1910. Fred Harvey Co. (Grand Canyon National Park #15803E.)

perfect model” from Oraibi, even as he describes modern changes to protect the valuable collections “which, however, does not in any way detract from the ‘realness’ of the building.” In addition to Hopi artifacts, he says there are baskets “made by every Indian tribe in North America,” models of totem poles, carvings and boats from Alaska, Indian pottery from various pueblos, and ancient Navaho, Mexican, and Chimillo blankets. He identifies the Hopi Altar Room, containing “two reproductions of altars made by the ethnologist, Rev. H.R. Voth [as] by far the most interesting room in the house to the thoughtful inquirer,” although one wonders what became of “authenticity.” James observed basket makers, blanket weavers, silversmiths and others, Navajo as well as Hopi, showing tourists how it is authentically done. Of the Navajo weavers he says, “”In a study of the Indian blanket, as it is made today, we are approximately nearly to the pure aboriginal method of pre-Columbian times.”29 James stresses the authenticity he fi nds at Hopi House, which Colter and the Harvey Company also affi rmed. Because the tourist is seeking the authentic, spectacle must appear to present life as it is really lived. James mentions models and reproductions and acknowledges the various tribes included in Hopi House as if they were all part of the same family, but

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still wants to assert he is seeing the “real thing.” In MacCannell’s terms Hopi House is an excellent example of the “production of authenticity” or “staged authenticity.” “Touristic consciousness is motivated by its desire for authentic experiences”—tourists want to see the “real thing,” to get back stage and see life as it is lived, not performed. But “it is always possible that what is taken to be entry into a back region is really entry into a front region that has been totally set up in advance for touristic visitation.”30 This is, of course, true of Hopi House, yet the tourists were convinced that they were observing authentic Indian life. When Hopi House opened in 1905 pottery maker Nampeyo and ten members of her family took up residence there from January to April. A brochure describes the “authentic spectacle”: Roof Garden Party, Hopi House These quaintly-garbed Indians on the housetop hail from Tewa, the home of Nampeyo, the most noted pottery-maker in all Hopiland. Perhaps you are so fortunate as to see Nampeyo herself. Here are Hopi men, women, and children—some decorating exquisite pottery; others

Figure 3.3 “Native Roof Garden Party,” Potter Nampeyo and family members, 1905. Detroit Photographic. (Grand Canyon National Park #27532C.)

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spinning yarn and weaving squaw dresses. . . . Go inside and you see how these gentle folk live. The rooms are little and low, like their small-statured occupants. . . . The Hopis are . . . building sacred altars, mending moccasins—doing a hundred un-American things. They are the most primitive Indians in America, with ceremonies several centuries old.31 Publicity put out by the National Park in 1929 asserted that “Indians of the Grand Country are one of its most fascinating lures. . . . The district is one of the very few areas in the United States where the ‘red’ man still lives in his native state, primitive but happy, contented, unchanged by the white man’s civilization.”32 That the same discourse persisted almost twenty years later, only makes the point more strongly. The artificiality of the Hopi House setting and the Park Service statement is evident. Could the tourists really believe they were seeing a day in the ordinary life of a Hopi woman who is weaving while tourists gaze at her?—that this is the “authentic thing”? And could the National Park Service really believe the Hopi were not changed by the experience of being a spectacle—and being paid for it? The illusion could hold because Indians were so completely constructed as the archaic other. They were not real people. And they were all the same—whatever their craft, whatever their tribal background, they represented the primitive, archaic world. The brochure paints them as primitive pastoralists. This is one unreality. A second unreality was also projected in literature, art, and the tourist promotions. If the first unreality was the noble savage, who attracted the modern Euro-American as an icon of a nostalgic past (which never actually existed), the second was the savage “other” who was not civilized, indeed not quite human, and a threat to the mission of Anglo-America. Although this unreality is more commonly found in reference to Plains Indians, it also recurs in describing native peoples of the Southwest. In Three Wonderlands of the American West, a memoir and guidebook to Yellowstone, Yosemite, and Grand Canyon, which is, for the most part interestingly and sensitively written, Thomas Murphy describes his experience of the evening Hopi dances at Grand Canyon in this way: “A couple of slovenly bucks shuffled out to the center of the floor and began a characteristic native dance, accompanying their uncouth movements with a series of yelps and groans.”33 Some descriptions of native peoples, even in the railroad advertisements, were more attentive to reality than these extremes of pastoral primitivism or savagery. For example, Lummis, in “The Greatest Thing in the World,” written for a railroad publication, referring to modern Pueblos, describes “The strange dances, rites, dress and customs of this ancient people who had solved the problem of irrigation, six story house building and clean selfgovernment and even women’s rights—long before Columbus was born. There are ruins as striking as the storied ones along the Rhine, and far more remarkable.”34 George W. James, instead of presenting Native Americans as

90 Pilgrimage to the National Parks primitive people who are all alike, notes that the tourist can see members of at least three different tribes at the Grand Canyon. In addition to the Hopis, Navaho hogans are set up near Hopi House and the Havasupai can be seen in their camp “making baskets or dressing buckskin.” “To most people,” he says, “an Indian is an Indian, yet there is such a wonderful difference between these three peoples, in features, language, habits, religions, social customs, and life, that a short comparison cannot fail to be of interest and profit.” These distinctions are quite remarkable for the time. In comparing the Indians tourists see on the Rim, with those tourists would see if they traveled to the Havasupai’s home in Havasu Canyon, he is perhaps unveiling the falseness of tourists’ expectations when he says they should visit there only “If you are not too squeamish to see aboriginal man in his primitive dirt, study him in his home . . . if possible, witness one of his dances—a religious ceremony—and arrange to enter his primitive toholwoh or sweat-house.”35 But in marking what lies outside the constructed scene, “back stage,” he is making it part of the scene, the constructed authenticity. The Park Service evaluation of Hopi House is that it had a lasting influence on park architecture and that it was successful as a marketing facility, which was the Fred Harvey Company’s goal. 36 What this analysis ignores is what was going on besides marketing, both for the Hopi and the tourists. What does it mean to “market” people and why were tourists drawn to this spectacle? The desire to fi nd in the Native Americans the authentic that was not the tourists’ lives led them to affi rm a “primitive” that was not the actuality of the native peoples and at the same time to reaffi rm the superiority of their civilized industrial life—which had progressed beyond these origins. Yet they were drawn to these children of nature who “authentically” lived out a natural reverence for and inhabitation of nature that had been lost with “civilization.” There is a similarity in the function of the constructed Indians and the constructed geysers in Yellowstone: in both there is an expression of anxiety and confusion about the modern world and an affi rmation of something other than and, at the same time, part of their own industrial society. In this case we also see the blatant, but perhaps not even seen, expression of a racism that projects onto the colonized other a story that confi rms the American Empire—much as Albert Bushnell Hart did with his proclamation of who had the right to be the Americans who should see America fi rst. Behind these constructions is the search for the values and beliefs that would make sense of the progress and emptiness that haunted Euro-American lives. The native peoples, constructed as the Ancient Ones, provided the connection to the power of the origins that was also found in nature.

The Great Unknown With the sight sacralization of “our ancestors” the Canyon itself was available for sacralization. What had been seen as a desolate wasteland now

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became the sublime, the wonder of wonders. Beginning in the 1890s and gathering steam after the railroad arrived at the Rim in 1901, a ritualized language developed to mark the Canyon as a site of transcendent power and meaning, even as it maintained its reputation as “The Great Unknown.” This process had begun with publications from Powell’s expeditions in the 1870s, Thomas Moran’s paintings, and Charles Dutton’s 1882 Tertiary History, which showed tourists how to see the Canyon, through the language of ruins and the science of geology. If the Indians were living ruins who could provide a model of stability by bearing witness to the childhood of civilization and providing an Other against which Anglo-Americans could affi rm their America, the Grand Canyon was seen metaphorically to bear witness to the “ruins” of all civilizations. Travelers to the Canyon would have engaged in another antimodern antidote to the modern world as they stood in awe and bewilderment before the unknown of the vast Canyon. To try to tame the Other and make it available for viewing, Dutton named many of the large features of the Grand Canyon using the architectural language of ruins. As had occurred with the “living ruins,” he took on the language of the Orient to suggest both the mysterious, exotic Other, and to imbue the Canyon with sacred meaning, although one more mysterious than ordinary western religion could provide. The extraordinary rock formations arising from the Canyon were given names such as Vishnu’s Temple, Shiva’s Temple, and Hindoo Amphitheater. Later, Greek temples and European legendary architecture such as “The Holy Grail Temple” were added. Not only do we have the equivalent of European ruins, but the ancient spiritual traditions of Europe and of the East, are virtually present in the Great Chasm, which became known in its totality as “The Shrine of the Ages,” American sacred space that included all other sacred space. As we have seen, the language of ruins was used in the post-Civil War period in relation to nature. Although America might lack the ancient history of civilization of Europe as seen in architectural remains, America too had an ancient past. The power of “ruins” in the European model was not only that they demonstrated a great and ancient past, but also that they “were evidence of the great wheel of time . . . and confronted human consciousness with a time stream of sublime cyclic flow in which empires grew, flourished, and decayed.” As environmental philosopher Paul Shepherd points out, there is more than a metaphoric connection between the European and American ruins, because “the same processes that sheared fragments from the Pantheon fractured the canyon walls.”37 However, the sublimity of the Grand Canyon took on a deeper form as the baffling immensity of the geologic time was laid out starkly for all to see. This was not cyclical time, but unimaginable eons of time, leaving human history far behind. Mystery beyond human culture was revealed; but the nation’s superiority, closely connected to the Creator, was also asserted as the ruins of America were seen as paradigmatic in revealing the mysteries

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of the entire process of God’s creation. So, interestingly and contradictorily, in an attempt to show itself as the equal of European culture, the ruins of America demonstrated the superiority of nature over culture. The language of ruins while relying on a European convention subverted it, transforming the ruins of great civilizations into the unruined New World. To be sure, the language of nature was also being subverted, identifying the Canyon as God’s pristine creation while ignoring the cultural construction that was transforming it from the Great Wasteland to magnificent ruins. The conceit of ruins, as used at the Grand Canyon, depended on the language of science, with geology playing an important role in transforming and trumping the European language of cultural ruins. Geology revealed the wonders of God’s creation, and, interestingly, this went hand in hand with Darwin’s theory of evolution. Art historian Andrew Wilton asserts that the Grand Canyon “could hardly have been comprehended before Sir Charles Lyell [geologist who influenced and affi rmed Darwin] and Charles Darwin permitted the thought that the earth was much more than four thousand years old.”38 Myths of origin tell how things came to be the way they are and establish meaning for societies. John Sears asserts that “By the nineteenth century science had begun to take on some of the functions of myth” and before Darwin “the science which functioned most successfully in this way was geology.”39 Even after the biological sciences came to the fore, geology still served this role, as we see with the Grand Canyon. The language of science, however, was not all that was needed. The conceit of ruins also depended on the languages of art and religion. With the Grand Canyon the language of architecture is foremost and the architectural ruins are often given religious names. Moreover, in their description of the experience of the Canyon, scientists and tourists turn again and again to the language of sublimity and the transcendent, which artists like Moran attempted to evoke in their paintings. Science, art, and the sacred go hand in hand. In his fi ne study of the Grand Canyon, On the Rim, one of cultural studies scholar Mark Neumann’s interesting themes is what he calls “split vision” or the confrontation between aesthetics (and religion) and science. In spite of his emphasis on the discontinuity between them, describing their expression in people like Powell and Dutton as “divided allegiances and dual vision,” what Neumann seems to show is their rather seamless integration. Although Wallace Stegner may be right that “Dutton never made up his mind whether he was literary traveler or sober scientific analyst,”40 the presence of both in his work, as in Powell’s, does not indicate something awry, but I would suggest that they are found together in a very American way, pragmatically combining what is needed to get the job done. John Wesley Powell was a scientist and a practical man, with an interest in applied geology and water use. Yet in his report on the 1875 expedition, Exploration of the Colorado River he described the strata that remain as shelves as forming “the stony leaves of one great book. He who would

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read the language of the universe may dig out letters here and there . . . so as to understand a little, the story of creation.”41 Art historian Joni Kinsey describes Powell as “geopious” and notes he said, “‘the thought grew into my mind that the cañons of this region would be a book of Revelations in the rock-leaved Bible of geology. . . . And I determined to read the book.’”42 In an article titled “The Scientific Explorer,” written for the 1906 ATSF publication, The Grand Canyon of Arizona, Powell includes a section called “As Seen by the Geologist” and another, “As Seen by the Artist.” Throughout the article Powell moves from the descriptive and analytic language of the scientist to the voice of the storyteller, inviting the reader to experience the canyon he is describing, and then to the language of art and religion to express the ineffable. He concludes his essay saying that with a great deal of effort “a concept of sublimity can be obtained, never again to be equaled on the hither side of paradise.” In the artist’s section he notes there are two ways mountains are represented and “Both . . . have told the truth.”43 One form of expression, it seems, whether scientific, or artistic, or religious, is not sufficient to capture the Canyon. Similarly, geologist Clarence Dutton’s report on the Powell expedition, Tertiary History of the Grand Cañon District, readily and effectively combines poetic expressions about the meaning and beauty of the Canyon with fi rst-rate scientific description. In the report the illustrations of two artists are used: Thomas Moran, whose Chasm of the Colorado attempts to capture both Powell’s geology and Biblical references,44 and William Henry Holmes, whose “penchant for detail,” as Neumann says, served “well a government document aiming to map the region.” In spite of coming from very different approaches, both artists “had invented their viewpoints, and they often referred to [expedition photographer] Hillers’ photographs in their studios as they composed a canyon to suit the inclinations of a scientific or romantic observer.”45 Dutton’s writing style reflects this mingling of genres as well, moving back and forth—sometimes apparently deliberately, sometimes not—between providing description and analysis of geological history of the area on the one hand and leading the reader from sight to sight, creating the experience of the view, on the other. In the opening “Abstract,” he says, for example, “Chapter VII resumes the narrative treatment, and the reader is conducted on an imaginary journey.” Or, “Chapter III is mainly devoted to a description of the Vermillon Cliffs. . . . It is written in eff usive style, and is an attempt to portray the magnificent scenery which this colossal wall presents.” He also gives, in abundance, “facts” to develop “the argument for the conclusions reached.”46 Even though this seeming division into chapters more devoted to facts, description, or narrative would support Neumann’s “split vision,” in fact, all the chapters include explaining, describing, being factual, analyzing, and presenting the experience of what is seen. Neumann says that for Dutton the scientist, as well as Moran the artist, “the truth of the canyon lay in the aesthetic and spiritual experience of the individual”47

94 Pilgrimage to the National Parks and whatever tools—geology, architecture, or religion, for example—could supply language to express this experience were readily used by both. The need to use these various tools relates to what media scholar Richard Grusin calls the “cognitive inaccessibility” of the Canyon.48 The inability to make sense of what one sees is repeated over and over, both in Dutton’s scientific work and the reports of tourists. For example, Dutton leads into his chapter on “The Panorama from Point Sublime” by ending the previous chapter, “Reaching the Brink,” as follows, trying to create for the reader the impact of the Canyon: On yonder hillside, beneath one of these kingly trees, is a spot which seems to glow with an unwonted wealth of floral beauty. It is scarcely a hundred yards distant; let us pluck a bouquet from it. We ride up the slope. The earth suddenly sinks at our feet to illimitable depths. In an instant, in the twinkling of an eye, the awful scene is before us. The unexpectedness and surprise leave the mind without tools of comprehension. Dutton suggests several reasons for the difficulty in understanding this “great innovation in modern ideas of scenery.” The immensity of the Canyon is, of course, one. He describes the view from Point Sublime: “Unquestionably the great, the overruling feature is the wall on the opposite side of the gulf. Can mortal fancy create a picture of a mural front a mile in height, 7 to 10 miles distant, and receding into space indefi nitely in either direction?” But it is not just the magnitude that appalls. In all the vast space beneath and around us there is very little upon which the mind can linger restfully. It is completely fi lled with objects of gigantic size and amazing form, and as the mind wanders over them it is hopelessly bewildered and lost. It is useless to select special points of contemplation. The instant the attention lays hold of them it is drawn to something else, and if it seeks to recur to them it cannot fi nd them. Everything is superlative, transcending the power of the intelligence to comprehend it. There is no central point or object around which the other elements are grouped and to which they are tributary.49 This is an example of the failure of aesthetic comprehension. Grusin also notes the failure of scientific comprehension. Even though Dutton can give a satisfactory scientific explanation for the creation of the Canyon through erosion and sedimentation, Grusin argues this “does not preclude Dutton’s experience of the geological version of the Kantian mathematical sublime.” After considering the vastness of the effects of erosion, Dutton says, “‘our wonder is transferred to the immensity of the periods of time required’ to create this landscape. . . . Dutton’s geological sublime is marked less by the nineteenth-century scientist’s inability to measure the canyon’s immense

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size than by his inability to comprehend the immense periods of time required to create the canyon.”50 The response to this incomprehensibility is the “negative sublime—the ‘spirit is broken and its imagination completely crushed.’”51 This does not, however, stop Dutton from using the tools of geology to explain erosion or the tools of art to try to give order to the confusion the eye perceives. Architecture is his primary tool for imposing order on the visual chaos through the human artifice of naming. By giving the bewildering rock masses names of exotic sacred sites and icons—Shiva’s Temple, for example, the mystery transcending human creations is also evoked—but this just serves to reinforce the incomprehensibility of the site. Insofar as these two visions were held together at the Canyon, an ideal is embodied that includes God as Creator, science as human discovery, and individual spiritual yearnings, with sublime transcendence overseeing them all—which greatly appealed to Americans at the turn of the century. The most interesting part is not a “split vision” but the fact that Americans at the turn of the century held together these apparently confl icting visions.

Pilgrimage to the Shrine of the Ages The early visitors who came to the Canyon shared these visions, as their experiences were shaped by Dutton’s descriptions, Moran’s paintings, and Orientalist discourse. In what became a repeated incantation of its sacredness, the Canyon is described as indescribable. Lummis provides a good example of what was repeated by many, appealing to the transcendence of the experience and utilizing geological and architectural references in his description. I shall not attempt to describe the Grand Cañon of the Colorado, for language cannot touch that utmost wonder of creation. It is incomparably the greatest abyss on earth . . . its matchless walls carved by the eternal river into a myriad towering sculptures . . . whose material is here sandstone, there volcanic rock . . . threaded by the greatest stream in half a continent, which looks a mere steel ribbon at the bottom of that inconceivable gorge, the Grand Cañon of Colorado is that of which there is no such thing as a description.52 When Chicago writer Harriet Monroe visited the Grand Canyon in 1899 she relied on the romantic hyperbole of her day to evoke the overwhelming sublimity she experienced at the fi rst sight of the canyon. She, too, turned to architecture to try to explain the unexplainable, adding the theme of apocalypse to further emphasize the indefi nable experience. It was like sudden death . . . for in a moment we stood at the end of the world, at the brink of the kingdoms of peace and pain. The gorgeous purples of sunset fell into darkness and rose into light over mansions

96 Pilgrimage to the National Parks colossal beyond the needs of our puny unwinged race. Terrific abysses yawned and darkened; magical heights glowed with iridescent fi re. As I grew familiar with the vision, I could not quite explain its stupendous quality. . . . Yet for grandeur appalling and unearthly, for ineffable, impossible beauty, the cañon transcends [all other powerful sights]. . . . It is as though to the glory of nature were added the glory of art; as though, to achieve her utmost, the proud young world had commanded architecture to build for her and color to grace the building.53 In a manner similar to Grusin’s description, Monroe domesticates the Canyon through associating nature’s power with human artifice, while at the same time creating for the reader the overwhelming experience that is beyond understanding. Another traveler, Theodore Roosevelt, visited the Grand Canyon in 1903 and, in addition to voicing the proscribed words, also evoked the nationalism inherent in See America First. He says the Canyon “is in its kind absolutely unparalleled throughout the rest of the world. I shall not attempt to describe it, because I cannot.” Tourists, then, must come and see for themselves. But, he asks them, “Keep this great wonder of nature as it now is. . . . You cannot improve on it; not a bit. The ages have been at work on it, and man can only mar it. What you can do is to keep it for your children, your children’s children and for all who come after you, as one of the great sights which every American, if he can travel at all, should see.”54 Roosevelt identified the Canyon as the Great Unknown, nature untouched by humans, yet at the same time constructed it as America, giving Americans powers coincident with it. Harriet Monroe, reveling in the “Unknown,” commented on the dissatisfaction of some of her traveling companions, who “pleaded for improvements” including a railroad to the rim, a hotel on one of the cliffs, and “yes, even a funicular railway down to the hidden river, and pumping works which should entice its waters up the steep slope. . . . But I,” she said, “rose up and defended the wilderness; rejoiced in the dusty stage ride, in the rough cabin that rose so fitly from the clearing, in the vast unviolated solitudes—in all these proofs that one of the glories of earth was still undesecrated by the chatter of facile tourists.”55 Roosevelt also stressed this plea for preservation. In his 1903 speech at the Canyon he specifically praised the Santa Fe Railroad for deciding not to build a hotel on the rim of the canyon. “I hope you will not have a building of any kind, not a summer cottage, a hotel or anything else, to mar the wonderful grandeur, sublimity, the great loneliness and beauty of the cañon.”56 Two years later the Santa Fe and Fred Harvey had built the El Tovar Hotel and Hopi House on the rim of the Canyon and codified the pilgrimage to the Great Unknown. With the establishment of Hopi House the living ruins and the canyon ruins came together. Both were intended to present an unruined primordial moment, persisting for the Canyon (they said, even as the El Tovar

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Hotel was built on the rim), but, sadly but necessarily, disappearing for the Indians (they said, even as Havasupai Indians at Supai Camp thrived and continued to contend for land, grazing, and hunting rights). The late moderns assuaged their anxiety by returning to the primordial origins, the amazing chasm that both humbled and empowered them and the pastoral Hopi who acted out for them the childhood of civilization, when life was more peaceful and harmonious, when spirituality was immanent in everyday life. And they came to this primordial sacred place to reenact the pristine beginnings—by train. Through the technology of the industrial revolution, they could escape from technology. The pilgrimage that developed under the direction of the ATSF and the Harvey Company assisted in bringing these contradictory elements together. ATSF named one of its trains “The Chief” and displayed Navajo sand paintings as murals in the railroad cars. Fred Harvey adopted as its emblem the Thunder Bird, claiming it was part of the mythology of many Indians of North America. Dilworth shows the inherent contradictions in these activities: “Thus, these two modern corporate entities, which were paragons of efficiency and marketing, wrapped themselves in an Indian blanket, so to speak, and used Indians to ‘naturalize’ their activities.”57 Further, what they created was an American pilgrimage. “Nature and natives were nostalgically appropriated in the name of nationalism, for in the scientists’ and artists’ images and the ‘corporate poetry’ of Santa Fe/ Harvey, the Great Southwest’s lands and peoples came to signify not just the region but America itself.” Weigle and Babcock argue that “art objects, especially those made from the earth itself, were easily transformed into icons of the nation state.”58 Thus, the pilgrims were invited to view and to buy the artwork of the primordial people to take relics home to their modern industrial lives that represented both the primordial peoples and the true America. The forms this pilgrimage took were many, involving other contradictions, with antimodern rejection of industrial America lying side by side with the enjoyment of the fruits of industrial America; with “the Great Outdoors” for those who sought “strenuous living” to hotel accommodations which allowed one to view the Canyon without walking a step; with traditionalism and transgression of tradition, as seen, for example, in gender roles; with the rustic frontier and classical Europe cohabiting in the creations of the Santa Fe/Harvey. The El Tovar Hotel provided the ritual setting for many of these contradictions. The construction of El Tovar paralleled in many ways the architectural creations in Yellowstone. The architect, Charles Whittlesey, trained in the Chicago offices of Louis Sullivan, continued the “American aesthetic” commitment to create a building that would fit its surroundings. The building should reflect the rocks and trees of the environment and not interrupt the visual line of the Rim—although it was built on the rim.59 Native limestone was used, but it was necessary to import Douglas

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fi rs from Oregon.60 El Tovar was considered by some to be not as impressive as Old Faithful Inn, or at least it was said to have “less of the genuine atmosphere of the wild about it.”61 This was intentional. An elegant hotel with touches of the wild seemed what Whittlesey and Fred Harvey/ATSF intended. Although the name “Bright Angel” was considered for the hotel, calling on the Canyon’s American explorer tradition,62 instead an old world name was chosen—“El Tovar” for a Spanish conquistador, evoking the grandeur of a time past and exotic in its foreignness, just as the Southwest was. The rustic was still an important part of the hotel’s structure and decor, with log and dark board exterior, “wood in the rough” on the inside, and massive wooden beams. Native American and hunting motifs evoked frontier times.63 In spite of these “wild” touches, the unwelcoming desert landscape may have encouraged the Company to provide more familiar, European elements, including a Swiss tower and gabled windows and some guest rooms decorated in the European rather than the western style. To further enhance traditional luxury, the hotel had “a solarium, a music room, a fifteenth-century Norwegian-style dining room, a roof garden, a greenhouse for raising vegetables, and telephones.” The guest rooms had hot and cold running water—which had to be supplied from over a hundred miles away because of the lack of water on the Rim.64 All the rooms had a view of the Canyon, leading one tourist to remark, “the guest hardly needed to go outside to enjoy nature’s wonders.”65 Advertisers reassured tourists that El Tovar was “highly modern throughout . . . because money has here summoned the beneficent genii who ministers to our bodily comfort.”66 There are a number of interesting confl icting ideals of the American people here. Comfort and luxury confi rm the success of the American mission and its industrial society. The rustic, frontier and Indian primitiveness and the Spanish exoticism speak to an antimodern rejection of the stifl ing atmosphere of this society. An interesting contrast between the rustic and the traditional, which also expresses confl icting visions of gender roles, is found in the “Rendezvous Room” and “The Ladies Lounging Room.” The rustic was dominant in the “Rendezvous Room,” also known as “Nimrod’s Cabin” (after the famed hunter and grandson of Noah—another Oriental touch). The room, decorated with Navajo rugs and Craftsman-style furniture, as well as animal heads—trophies of conquest, provided a space where men who were fi rm believers in Roosevelt’s strenuous life could imagine themselves as frontiersmen off in the wild—although no hunting was allowed at the Grand Canyon after it was designated as a game reserve in 1906. The Navajo rugs were presented symbolically as yet another “trophy,” expressing a reality about the American West in conflict with Hopi House, placed next to El Tovar, and dedicated to honoring the noble, but inexorably, vanishing race. Although women were not excluded from the Rendezvous Room and they were certainly partners in the Orientalism through which Native

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Americans were seen, the hotel also had a “Ladies Lounging Room.” In relation to gender much of the Santa Fe/Harvey publicity presented an image of a Victorian “cult of domesticity” that was no longer intact, but could evoke a nostalgic image of a more stable past. A brochure for the El Tovar said of the lounge, “In it the better half of the world may see without being seen—may chat and gossip—may sew and read—may do any of the inconsequent nothings which serve to pleasantly pass the time away.”67 In spite of this image, in fact women were fully involved in this and other touristic adventures of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. As John Sears notes, in spite of differences in the ways women and men constructed life on the actual frontier, even in the nineteenth century, “Tourism, unlike hunting or plowing, tending a flower garden or caring for children, was never gender identified. Both men and women participated in it, often together, sometimes with children, and in doing so shared the same space.”68 Neumann confi rms this as he notes that Mary Smith recorded in the visitors’ register in 1892 that “Our crowd, ladies and all, made trip from cabin to river, back to cabin and up to head of trail in one day.” Neumann argues that “In suggesting that men and women would fi nd distinctively different leisure experiences at the Grand Canyon, the Santa Fe Railway and the Harvey Company only mirrored a larger fiction of the West circulating in popular culture.”69 Even the management acknowledged the disruption of traditional forms when the Santa Fe’s 1902 Grand Canyon of Arizona brochure recommended “short walking skirts” or “divided skirts” for women and the 1906 version added they could be rented at El Tovar and Grand View hotels.70 We see in this contrast between proclaimed story and lived story a disengagement from ordinary reality that, in the western tourist experience, was able to create a story of freedom men and women could share, even if what they were being freed from was not the same.71 For Roosevelt the West provided a place set apart from the modern world where Americans—especially men—could conquer their over-refi nement. The frontier values of the Wild West would revitalize life and build character. What was sought was a combination of the desire for intense, vital living, not bound by restrictive society that took away one’s autonomy, and, at the same time, moral rectitude. We see this widespread association of frontiersman and morality, for example, in Enos Mills who opened Longs Peak Inn in 1901, just outside what he would help establish as Rocky Mountain National Park in 1915. At his Inn he prohibited music, dancing, and card playing, gave lectures in the evening and climbing tours in the day: this was the way to become a man of character.72 This emphasis on morality provided a link between genders: the “cult of domesticity” delegated to women the maintenance of moral virtues. Although unacknowledged, this entry of men into women’s realms at the same time that we see women’s entry into men’s realms provided a bridge on which they could both link virtue and intense living.

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The Harvey Girls were another dimension of the construction of the Grand Canyon that bears on the understanding of the West and of gender. The Harvey Girls became so well-known that a movie of that name was made in 1945, which opens, “These winsome waitresses conquered the West as surely as the Davy Crockets and the Kit Carsons—not with powderhorn and rifle, but with a beefsteak and a cup of coffee.” These single, young, white women from the East and Midwest may have conquered the towns along the ATSF, but at El Tovar their role would have been to reassure the tourists that in spite of the foreignness of the landscape, civilized life surrounded them. It is no doubt true, as Neumann says, that these women, who were carefully chaperoned by the Company, served “the leisure fantasy of a man’s West.”73 Nonetheless, they were still women who had the adventure of leaving home, traveling to unknown country, and living their own version of the West.74 In addition to the rituals of viewing the Canyon and the Indians and purchasing souvenirs of both, an additional ritual that had staying power was the Christian Easter sunrise service, the fi rst of which was held in 1902. By the 1930s it had become a grand affair, with up to fi fteen thousand pilgrims attending. The emphasis was on combining the wonder of Easter with the wonder of the Canyon. As was proclaimed at one service:

Figure 3.4 Harvey Girls at Grand Canyon. (Arizona State Library, Archives and Public Records, History and Archives Division, Phoenix, 01–4777.)

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We come here Easter after Easter because there is no other place on earth where the handiwork of God brings one nearer to the real meaning of the word of God. In the Grand Canyon of Arizona we have a positive record of time past as in Easter we have an undeniable chapter in the Creator’s plan for every individual’s tomorrows.75 Another service opened in this way: This is the Shrine of the Ages . . . the Grand Canyon of Arizona . . . the abiding place of inexhaustible inspiration and an infi nity that raises the mind and soul to the limitless grandeur of the whole of creation. No other altar on earth commands so great a perspective as the one before which we now worship. The many religious names in the Canyon were noted and an American Indian participated in the service, both showing that from the perspective of the Canyon, differences mattered little.76 Although appreciation for the infi nite sublime was central to the ritual experience at Grand Canyon, what became increasingly important was moving beyond observation to participation in nature’s wonders—“the great outdoors.” Physical exercise was stressed more: one should not just view nature, but be part of it. The healing transformation came not just from the experience of the sublime, but also from bodily involvement in the environment. A Harvey Company ad emphasized “the invigorating nature of wild surroundings and the delight of outdoor exercise” which ranged from “easy and gentle drives over forest roads” to “more vigorous horseback exercise” to “strenuous walks down into the Titan of Chasms.”77 All such endeavors, promised promotional material from the ATSF, “had the power to recuperate man’s exhausted energies.”78 This “great outdoors” ritual activity clearly relates to the larger movement we will look at in more detail later. We see it at the Grand Canyon, and will again at Glacier, as a new ritual that might have the power to disrupt more traditional ones.

PRESERVATION AND CONQUEST IN GLACIER NATIONAL PARK The Great Outdoors took on a central role in the narrative embodied in Glacier National Park. The frame for this story was “preservation and conquest.” Although these ideas can be seen in the narrative constructions of many other national parks, Glacier is especially effective in embodying these themes in its narratives, physical development, and relationship with Blackfeet Indians. In all the parks examined in this project, whether “conquest” is an overt part of the narrative or not, eviction of or restrictions on

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Native Americans is an essential part of the story, usually not told, which will be briefly examined in this section.

Reenacting the Strenuous Life As Roosevelt said in his “The Strenuous Life” speech at the Hamilton Club in Chicago in 1899, shortly before the beginning of the Spanish-American War, “The timid man, the lazy man, the man who distrusts his country, the over-civilized man, who has lost the great fighting, masterful virtues . . . will shrink from seeing the nation undertake its new duties.” To the contrary, as he said at the quarter-centennial celebration of Colorado statehood in 1901, the way of living as a “manly man” lay in the West. “More and more as the years go by this republic will find its guidance in the thought and action of the West, because the conditions of development in the West have steadily tended to accentuate the peculiarly American characteristics of its people. . . . Men who greatly dared and greatly did . . . , in the ceaseless strife waged against wild man and wild nature. The winning of the West was the great epic feat in the history of our race.”79 Very much in the vein of Frederick Jackson Turner, who had written about the closing of the American Frontier in 1893,80 Roosevelt connects the making of the self and the nation in the frontier West, where engagement with and conquest of the primal forces of nature—wild land and wild men—both embody Manifest Destiny and create the actors who can achieve it. Now the frontier was closed; the west was won. But in these yet “wild” places, the men from the city, those engaged in urban industrial life, have the opportunity to reenact this encounter and conquest and thereby become manly men and good citizens. Roosevelt was also known as a conservationist, which in addition to Gifford Pinchot’s “wise use” of America’s natural resources, also meant for him the preservation of wild landscape and game animals.81 In Outdoor Pastimes, discussing wilderness reserves, he said, Every believer in manliness . . . , and every lover of nature . . . should strike hands with the far-sighted men who wish to preserve our material resources, in the effort to keep our forests and our game beasts . . . indeed, all the living creatures of prairie, and woodland, and seashore—from wanton destruction. This is essentially a democratic movement. . . . It is entirely in our power as a nation to preserve large tracts of wilderness, which are valueless for agricultural purposes and unfit for settlement, as playgrounds for rich and poor alike, and to preserve the game so that it shall continue to exist for the benefit of all lovers of nature, and to give reasonable opportunities for the exercise of the skill of the hunter.82 The area that in 1910 became Glacier National Park was the perfect setting for the renewal of the manly frontiersman in body and spirit through

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successful ventures into the wilderness. This area lies on either side of the Continental Divide in Montana, extending to the Canadian border. Unlike the Grand Canyon and Yellowstone, Glacier’s scenic appeal was easily apparent, with heavily wooded areas, numerous lakes, and craggy mountains. Immense glaciers were astounding phenomena embodying America’s ancient history, but were also readily understandable as impressive snowfields. The two people most responsible for the establishment and development of Glacier National Park were George Bird Grinnell, Yale Ph.D., editor, adventurer, and naturalist/ethnologist, and Louis Hill, President of the Great Northern Railroad and a devotee of the wilderness as a “counterforce to the powerful impact of decline and decay that seemed to be undermining modern society.”83 Both Grinnell and Hill, although quite different in their impacts on the Park, participated fully in Roosevelt’s vision of the power of the wilderness to make good Americans and in the complex interactions of conquest and preservation this involved. George Bird Grinnell fi rst “went West” in 1870 and discovered a new, vital world. When he wanted to return in 1881, however, he found the West he had visited in Nebraska, Dakota, and North Park Colorado, was “being transformed beyond recognition by an invasion of prospectors, hide hunters, cattlemen, and farmers.” In 1885 he first entered the eastern side of the Glacier region and returned year after year. The primordial quality of the experience is seen in John Reiger’s description: “He walked ground never before trod by any known white man,” “untouched wilderness waiting to be named.”84 He began advocating for the preservation of the area, and initiated the process of American sight sacralization with articles in the Century magazine in 1901, where he promoted the area as having “cañons deeper and narrower than those of the Yellowstone, mountains higher than those of the Yosemite.”85 As Anne Hyde notes, Grinnell could have used the language of the Swiss Alps, which this glaciated region resembles more than any other part of the country, but instead he chose what was becoming an American idiom—the language of science, mixed with aesthetic observations and American references, as Dutton had done in his descriptions of the Grand Canyon.86 Grinnell’s dedication to the landscape was equaled by his commitment to preserving animal life. An avid hunter, when he saw the massive destruction of animals, he turned to preservation. “Most of us began as ardent hunters, but later our viewpoint changed. . . . Many of us now recognize that we are trustees of this wild life for a coming generation.”87 As editor of Forest and Stream he advocated among sportsmen for conservation laws. This ambiguous mix of hunter and protector resulted in the Boone and Crockett Club, which was cofounded by Grinnell and Roosevelt in 1887. A group of wealthy and powerful easterners met at Roosevelt’s Madison Avenue home and the sportsmen’s society that emerged promoted “manly sport with the rifle” and the exchange of ideas on “hunting, travel, and

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exploration; on the various kinds of hunting rifles; on the haunts of game animals, etc.”—goals quite in keeping with their devotion to hunting. However, their list also included working “for the preservation of the large game of this country” and they affi rmed the importance of science as they sought “To promote inquiry into, and to record observations on the habits and natural history of the various wild animals.”88 The title of the club connects Grinnell, as well as Roosevelt, to the imaginary of the frontier. Equally telling in terms of conquest and preservation is Grinnell’s work with Native Americans. He was asked by the Department of the Interior to investigate the plight of the Blackfeet (Piegan) Indians whose treaty land or reservation began at the Continental Divide in northern Montana and extended east into the plains.89 Following the “starving winter” of 1883– 1884, when Grinnell visited, they were living in the foothills and using the mountains for hunting, plant gathering, and ceremonies. Although he was able to secure more food for them, the desperate conditions persisted and in 1895 the government sent Grinnell to negotiate with them for the sale of their mountain land, which included the sacred places of Chief Mountain and Two Medicine Lakes. Grinnell’s comments at the time indicated he thought this was a win-win situation: the mountains would be uninhabited, as they should be for their preservation and so urbanites could enjoy their uncivilizing influence, and the Indians would be further advanced on their road to civilization by leaving their former life in the mountains behind.90 Grinnell’s knowledge of the country was facilitated by Blackfeet guides, and the wonders of the place and the decline of its (former) inhabitants seemed to go together in his mind. He took a great interest in the Blackfeet culture and engaged in recording stories told by the elders of the flourishing “Buffalo Days,” as a way of preserving what he could only see as vanishing people. That he had a genuine concern for the welfare of native peoples is without question. In his introduction to Blackfoot Lodge Tales he says, “The most shameful chapter of American history is that in which is recorded the account of our dealings with the Indians. The story of our government’s intercourse with this race is an unbroken narrative of injustice, fraud, and robbery.” He also believed that “The Indian has the mind and feelings of a child” and there was no way they could survive in the new world, which was the white man’s world, without becoming “civilized.”91 He begins the Blackfoot Lodge Tales by describing a scene where he and several Blackfeet were sitting about the fire in the lodge on Two Medicine. Double Runner picked up a piece of paper on which Grinnell had been taking notes and said, “this is education. Here is the difference between you and me. . . . You know what this means. I do not. . . . If all my people knew, the white people would not always get the best of us.” Grinnell responds, “Nisah (elder brother), your words are true. Therefore you ought to see that your children . . . get the white man’s knowledge.” Double Runner replies, “The old things are passing away, and the children of my children will be like white people. None of them will know how it used to be in their

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father’s days unless they read the things which we have told you, and which you are all the time writing down in your books.”92 The vanishing culture would be preserved by his ethnology. Just so, his beloved wilderness was in danger of vanishing and he would work to preserve it by making it part of a national park. It would then be able to keep its pristine, primordial character. On his early trips to the mountains, with Blackfeet guides leading him on Indian trails, he exclaimed about the “absolutely virgin ground . . . with no sign of previous passage” that he was discovering.93 Although he trod Indian paths, he could not see what was before him because “wilderness” meant uninhabited to him; therefore, he had to dehumanize the landscape and delocalize it so it could fit the narrative of timeless, unchanging American sacred space. George Grinnell did not see the confl ict or contradiction. Caring both for the welfare of native peoples and of the wilderness he loved, he could not see the dilemmas raised by assuming wilderness required non-habitation or that there was some strangeness in wanting to civilize the Indians and uncivilize himself. Thus, one of the nation’s most popular parks in the early twentieth century makes the connection between the vanishing Indian and the preservation of uninhabited wilderness for the rejuvenation of the industrial nation’s elite the foundation of the Park’s construction.

Construction of a Frontier Park Grinnell began working for the establishment of a national park in 1891 when the Great Northern Railway (GNR) reached the mountains, although it was not until 1910 that the bill was signed by President Taft. Louis Hill, who took over as President of the GNR from his father in 1907, was an important force in making the territory known to the legislators and was the primary developer of the Park from 1910 until the National Park Service formed in 1916. A passion for the outdoors and for Roosevelt’s strenuous life philosophy as the necessary elixir for urban Americans, lay side by side in Hill with a passion for manifesting the success story of the industrial nation through development of the GNR and its affiliated hotels. Together these visions led to an extremely successful advertising campaign, which also served to further sight sacralization. Louis Hill used the “See America First” slogan to sell Glacier by an appeal to Americans’ patriotism. Tourism was no longer just for pleasure or enhancing the GNR’s profits. By visiting the great lands of America, tourists were performing a duty of citizenship, and the great land of Glacier was especially suitable for this task. As a continuation of America’s attempt to establish an identity for itself apart from—and superior to—Europe, the “new Alps of the Western World” replaced Switzerland rather than imitating it. The Glacier area was also particularly suited to “the new American interest in wilderness, Indians, and distinctive scenery.”94 Glacier was pristine America waiting to be discovered, to be explored, to be conquered.

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And in reenacting this primal discovery, in reliving the frontier, the overcivilization Roosevelt so shunned would fall away and Americans would be rejuvenated to fulfill their duties as citizens of a thriving industrial country. Thus, in the process of performing their patriotic duty by seeing America fi rst, they were also becoming better American citizens. Louis Hill’s primary focus in the construction of this “Northwestern Playground” was the creation of a space where the leaders of industrial America, suffering from the anxieties of business worries, as well as class, race, and ethnic tensions, could come to revive themselves (certainly only the elite would be able to travel the Great Northern to his resort hotels). Hill was portrayed as the perfect model for Roosevelt’s strenuous life and it seems he may have actually lived this way as well. A news publicist wrote, “Mr. Hill is an everlasting worker. His health is splendid. He is of sturdy physique. He believes in plenty of fresh air and never fears the cold or rain. His home life is ideal.” In addition, it was noted that “he was an outdoorsman. He not only hunted and fished but also dabbled in scenic photography, landscape painting, and gardening.” Time in the wilderness, away from the blight of civilization was what he and his peers needed to persevere in the progress of America. As Emily Bayne Bosson of New York, a devotee of Glacier—and Hill—wrote to him, “This is just a little note of warm congratulation of the vision you have had for the West; every stand taken against super civilized modern life, is a right stand for the American people, if they are going to continue their energetic leadership of straight forward accomplishment in this present day world. . . . Our spoiled East would gain immeasurably by getting some big free spirit of the West.”95 However, Hill knew he not only had to sell the excursion to Glacier as an American pilgrimage, he also had to ensure the wilderness atmosphere was preserved and Grinnell’s idea of a national park was a good way to do this. Hill publicized the scenery as promoters of the earlier parks had, bringing artists and writers to Glacier on the Great Northern. In 1909 Fred H. Kiser’s photographs were used in Great Northern publicity as well as being shown at exhibitions with the intention of furthering the passage of the park bill. “By focusing on dramatic mountain peaks and picturesque views, Kiser’s photographs reinforced the ideal of wilderness as pristine landscape untouched by the evils of modern civilization.”96 The campaign also used Indians as the human embodiment of the wilderness. Blackfeet Indians were used in promotional literature as well as appearing at the 1913 New York Travel and Vacation Show, where they camped on the roof of a hotel. Hill “took moving pictures of the ‘Last Grass Dance’ of the Blackfoot” which he showed at exhibitions; and in the 1920s he used the new medium of radio to broadcast Blackfoot songs and music (as well as “‘shrill piccolo-like chorus of the whistling marmots that populate Glacier National Park’”).97 The two dominant themes of Glacier National Park were, fi rst and primary, the preservation of a wilderness area that would feed the souls

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of Americans and revitalize their bodies and spirits and second, the Indians’ presence and their vanishing. The Indian presence needed was not the Blackfeet who had ceded part of their reservation which became the eastern side of Glacier National Park and who continued to contest their rights to traditional uses in the Park. The reality of the actual lives of the Blackfeet was hidden and “Glacier Park Indians,” as they were known, were used by the GNR and the Park as part of the imaginary of this virtual frontier; they became the promoters of Glacier as the Hopi did for Grand Canyon. They greeted the tourists and served as a sign of the power of the wilderness the tourists were about to encounter. That is, tourists could take on the role of the primal Indian in the wilderness and at the same time be the conqueror, the one who takes away the Indian land and wins the West. These themes of preservation and conquest are given embodiment in the development of lodging and travel within the Park. Hyde has said that the “forestry” architecture of the hotels taught people how to see the nature surrounding them.98 The nature they constructed was both pristine wilderness and the American frontier. Although obviously overlapping in their symbolic resonances, they are not identical; and tourists experienced confl icting appeals—to a oneness with nature, its land, animals, and people, and to the conquest of them. The GNR’s fi rst and premiere hotel was Glacier Park Hotel, built in 1913 on land bought from the Blackfeet, just outside the eastern boundary of the Park, by St. Paul architect Thomas D. McMahon. The Lodge was the fi rst thing tourists encountered when they got off the train. Met by Blackfeet in Plains warrior dress or blankets who took their bags, they were led to the “Lodge of the Big Trees,” as the Blackfeet called it. The main lobby was two hundred feet long and three stories high. As Nimrod’s Cabin at El Tovar, the Forest Lobby can be seen as displaying the trophies of conquest.99 Dominating the huge open space were sixty unpeeled logs, over three feet in diameter, forty feet long, and five hundred to eight hundred years old, ranging the length of each side of the lobby and serving as cross beams. Although this surely gives the impression of bringing the outside forest indoors, the trees were actually brought from Oregon and Washington.100 Also dominant were the heads, skins and horns or antlers of numerous animals. Indian artifacts decorated the lobby, including rugs, tepees, and a 180 foot mural “painted by Medicine Owl and eleven other Blackfeet braves and depicting the history of the Blackfeet nation in its palmy days.”101 There are similarities between the role of the Hopis at Grand Canyon and the Blackfeet at Glacier. In both cases the native peoples became part of the display of the park and were used to promote tourism. “Like the Indians of New Mexico, whose daily life was increasingly affected by the tourist demand for the sight of mystical, exotic Indians, Blackfeet Indians at the Lodge donned ‘traditional’ clothing, told ‘traditional’ tales, and danced ‘traditional’ dances as a way of luring tourists to the ‘exotic’ locale

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Figure 3.5 Lobby, Glacier Park Hotel, 1920s. Photograph by Fred H. Kiser. (Montana Historical Society Research Center Photograph Archives, Helena, Mt #4791.)

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of the park.”102 There are also similarities in native peoples’ functioning as “primitives,” as embodiments of our ancient past—whether representing ancient ages at Grand Canyon or frontier America at Glacier. Writers observed with delight that these Indians were “less corrupted by contact with whites than many other tribes.”103 To be with these “primitive” Indians, ostensibly living the life they had for centuries was to put the tourist in the midst of a primal culture that was clearly a great attraction and furthered the fantasy of being in the midst of the uncivilized wilderness—and all within their elegant hotel. A noticeable difference lay in the importance the Fred Harvey Company put on the display and preservation of Indian cultures and the display of the Hopi in a supposedly authentic residence doing their authentic work. In Glacier tourists would not see Blackfeet in the wilderness, engaged in their traditional riding, fishing, or hunting. Although the publicity showed pictures of Indians doing exactly those things, the wilderness was reserved for tourist ritual enactments, where the “untouched” land was there for them to discover.104 In this sense conquest and preservation were not that far apart as the Indians were preserved, but in a set apart space and time. The frontier was embodied in this Lodge, with the forest, animals, and Indians safely contained. Indians in their restricted roles, the animals represented by their skins and other body parts on the walls, and the trees on display in the architecture, were all signs of what was being preserved in the Park. In these icons was articulated the development that was not going to occur. They were also signs of the pristine power of original America the tourists hoped to imbibe. Because a central focus of the Glacier pilgrimage was to provide an alternative to urban, industrial life, it is not surprising that Indians played the exotic other in Glacier. However, as at other parks there was the concern that the Wild West would repel some tourists, and Old Europe elements were also added with, for example, the wait staff at Glacier Lodge in Swiss outfits. Interestingly, Louis Hill also used the exotic other of the Orient in his hotels, as wait people dressed in traditional Japanese garb brought teacarts around the lobby in the afternoon, Japanese lanterns hung from the great log ceilings, and imitation cherry blossoms appeared on tree trunk tables. There seem to be a number of things going on here. Hill’s railroad extended to the Pacific Coast and had connections with the Far East. The Oriental décor and people would connect with this geography and so promote “Eastward” travel. Further, the Manifest Destiny that Hill’s railroad to the Northwest embodied was extended beyond the boundaries of the United States through expansion to the Far East. Finally, the Orientalism of the exotic other was embodied here in the contradictory way this mode supposes: even as the antimodern impulse was asserting a vision diametrically opposed to urban, industrial America, those asserting it were part of the very social order it seemed to criticize.

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The Glacier Pilgrimage With its focus on strenuous living in pristine American wilderness, the pilgrimage was geared to activity. But the level of activity varied. One could stay at Glacier Lodge, right next to the railroad station and experience the wilderness through the “indoor wilderness” provided by Indian artifacts, tree trunks, and pictures of the Park’s scenery. One could venture out to stay in tepees on the lawn of Glacier Park Lodge, to live as the Indians lived. Interestingly—even though the accommodations were quite comfortable—few chose to live the Indian life. The preference seemed to be for hotel living with native icons to awaken the primitive past; and soon the Great Northern got Blackfeet to live in them, providing vicarious experience for the tourist.105 A step closer to wilderness would be to stay at Many Glacier Hotel, reachable by road and still serving with china and cut glass, but a bit more rustic than Glacier Lodge. There the tourist could sit on the veranda and behold the continental divide with Many Glacier Lake resting at its foot. Many tourists engaged wilderness in these ways. Hardier tourists, however, traveled through the Park on horseback, fi rst camping out and by 1915 staying the night at a series of eight chalets, each a day’s travel apart. This was in the tradition of the Swiss Alps, but with a western touch travel was primarily by horseback. This was the heart of the “strenuous life” atmosphere of Glacier. In 1911 Hill brought journalists to Glacier on the Great Northern to promote the wilderness experience. W.O. Chapman of the Chicago Evening Post reported:

Figure 3.6 Glacier Park Hotel. Photograph by T.J. Hileman. (National Archives #79-G-29A-1.)

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On this day and at this place assembled a corps of hothouse plants, city workers, persons who live under roofs, labor in skyscrapers, eat off a table and sleep in beds, and whose daily journeys are made by automobiles, suburban trains or street cars. They organized an exploring party to tread paths trod before only by Indians, trappers, the early woodsmen and by velvet-pawed beasts of prey. . . . This is the fi rst stopping place in Glacier National park. . . . This is the last evidence of civilization the explorers are to see until they emerge from the park a week or ten days hence.106 Although presented humorously, this was indeed a strenuous expedition for urbanites. Mary Roberts Rinehart is another example of the tourist who took strenuous living seriously. Rinehart published the story of her three hundred mile trip through Glacier and it became something of a guidebook for the region. Forty-two people, about half of them women, were led by outdoorsman and hunting companion of Theodore Roosevelt, Howard Eaton, over the Continental Divide and across the Park. Rather than staying in the chalets, they made their own camps to fully live out their back-to-nature philosophy. She records the change in these urbanites as they grew into the wilderness life: As the days went on there was a subtle change in the party. Women, who had to be helped into their saddles at the beginning of the trip, swung into them easily. Waistbands were looser, eyes were clearer; we were tanned; we were calm with the large calmness of the great outdoors. And with each succeeding day the feeling of achievement grew. . . . To some of us the mountains had made their ancient appeal. Never again should we be clear of their call. She invites others to join the adventure: “Go out to the West. Ride slowly not to startle the wild things. Throw out your chest and breathe. . . . Let the summer rains fall on your upturned face and wash away the memory of all that is false and petty and cruel.”107 Rinehart’s popular account served as a demonstration that strenuous living did not respect gender, as Roosevelt’s “manly” language suggested it might. Unlike Roosevelt’s gendered version, men and women alike were restored by wilderness experience. One of the journalists brought to the park in 1911, Tom Dillon, showed a similar inclusive view of the effects of wilderness. He described how Glacier Park Hotel was the meeting place of civilization and wilderness. “It is the outpost of the white shirt, the stiff hat and the hobble-gown. They are seen here fraternizing with the blue flannel, the sombrero and the divided skirt.”108 Both men and women come off the trail and meet men and women who have never left the lodges. As Rinehart notes, when they reached the hotel at Lake McDonald, “Again there were

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people dressed in civilized raiment, people who looked at us and our shabby riding-clothes with a distain not unmixed with awe.” Near the conclusion of the journey, Rinehart says, “It was the last leg of the journey. A day or so more and we should be scattered over the continent on whose spine we were so incontinently tramping. Back to civilization, to porcelain bathtubs and course dinners and facial massage, to stays and skirts, to roofs and servants and the vast impedimenta of living.”109 But she is, presumably, rejuvenated by the experience of pristine America and carrying with her, as well as passing on through her writing, the power of this pilgrimage experience.

Indians and the National Parks In 2007 a U.S. Senator accused members of the opposite party of being Indian givers, for seeming to give something and then seeming to take it away. I found this appellation rather surprising at this point in time, but was led by it to consider what the term might have meant in another time. What might Indians have given and then taken back? It is easy to imagine how the U.S. government could be seen as an “Indian giver,” signing treaties pledging certain lands to tribes and then reneging on the pledges and taking the land back. In the case of the Blackfeet and Glacier, the term might apply to both the tribe and the government. In 1895, at the urging of Grinnell, the Blackfeet ceded a strip of land, which was their western boundary to the continental divide, which then became the Park’s eastern boundary. To this day they want that strip back—or at least they want what they said they never gave—the hunting, fishing, and wood-gathering rights. As Little Chief said, “We sold the U.S. Government nothing but rocks only.”110 On the government’s side, they soon discovered the ceded strip was not enough—they needed additional land from the Blackfeet that would be winter feeding grounds for elk and deer from the park, which the Blackfeet were free to shoot when they came onto reservation land. These controversies illustrate another part of the national park story. The “Glacier Park Indians” are central to the narrative of Glacier as an American sacred space. But they–the Blackfeet—also have a life of their own: they are not simply part of the display at the Park. This narrative has been almost entirely left out of the story. However, even though not spoken, it is part of the embodiment that is the Park. Native peoples provided a significant challenge to the self-contained pristine wilderness story of the Park, which is clearly the dominant narrative that expressed the beliefs and values of at least white middle and upper class Americans at the turn of the century. Recognizing this reality is crucial to understanding the contestations not only in this Park but in the intimate relationship between native peoples and the preservation of “pristine America” in national parks generally. This alternate narrative has been a part of every national park. The story traditionally told was that Native Americans had not inhabited park lands.

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They may have been the “fi rst visitors” but they did not live there, nor were the park lands a necessary part of their lives. This narrative satisfied several needs: If the native peoples had not lived in these places, the U.S. had clear claim to unoccupied land: they did not have to take national park land from the Native Americans. Further, it became part of the narrative by the end of the nineteenth century that great American wilderness land was not inhabited. Earlier—as we saw in the paintings of Bierstadt— Indians were part of the natural scene. In fact, “‘picturesque’ Indians . . . ‘naturalized’ the scene.”111 But it later developed that to be wilderness land must be uninhabited, pristine. Since the story also included the vanishing Indian peoples, there was obviously a contradiction. But this was part of the sacred narrative that saw the vanishing wilderness and the vanishing redskins as dual parts of the foundation that had made America what it was and each needed to be preserved—in its own way—for the story of American progress to continue. The sacred narrative of Grand Canyon surely includes the Hopi—the ancient ones who go with the geological ancient eras. What is left out of the story are the Havasupai—the Indians who continued to live in the Park and whose reservation bordered the Park. Traditionally the Havasupai used both canyon and plateau for farming and hunting. Beginning in the 1880s the Havasupai territory and access were limited. When the plateau was made a game preserve, the effort was made to eliminate Havasupai hunting. A forest manager wrote in 1898, “The Grand Canyon of the Colorado River is becoming so renowned for its wonderful natural gorge scenery . . . that it should be preserved for the everlasting pleasure and instruction of our intelligent citizens as well as those of foreign countries. Henceforth, I deem it just and necessary to keep the wild and unappreciable Indians from off the Reserve.”112 The Havasupai served as manual laborers in the area from the coming of the railroad in 1901 and a village was constructed for them within the Park, known as Supai Camp. Despite the existence of these workers and this site, Indians are seldom mentioned in National Park Service records through the1920s. But the Supai presence was there, often with contentious negotiations—all of this a part of the story which has not appeared in the mythic narrative. Yosemite and Yellowstone present different stories of Indians. In neither case were American Indians part of a railroad’s advertising campaign. In the story of Yosemite, the early military expulsion of the Miwok Indians from the valley was followed by their return two years later. Thereafter they were a continuing part of the Yosemite story using the valley as summer locale, selling merchandise to tourists and hotels, including fish, strawberries, and their woven baskets, as well as entertaining tourists outside their hotels for penny handouts. Hutchinson used “Indian Camp” as a tourist draw in the 1870s and 1880s, because the native people “completed” the wilderness by their presence. At the same time that the tourists were attracted to the native people, expressing delight that the “simple children as of old”

114 Pilgrimage to the National Parks were still there, they also saw them as “fi lthy,” “uncouth,” and animal-like. Early visitor Thomas Starr King “found the ‘lazy, good for nothing, Digger Indians’ to be wholly incongruous with his notions of ‘pristine’ nature.” John Muir thought the Yosemite Indians to be ugly and asserted they had “‘no right place in the landscape,’ and he could not feel the ‘solemn calm’ of wilderness when he was in their presence.”113 We see here the developing view that wilderness could only be uninhabited. In 1890 when land outside the valley was designated a national park hunting rights were suspended and, as at Glacier and Grand Canyon, this interfered with the lifeways of the Indian peoples. By 1906 when the entire area came under federal jurisdiction the same narrative we saw in Glacier with George Grinnell was dominant: Wilderness is uninhabited and Indians must be drawn away from their savage traditional ways and integrated into white society. Even so, in 1914 the park wanted to construct an “authentic” Indian Village to entertain the tourists and keep the “filthy” Indians out of sight. Asbury, agent for Indian affairs objected to a camp established for “exhibition” purposes. “The Indians are there for the purpose of making their living at honest labor . . . and should be encouraged to make their own living, rather than become members of an aboriginal show.”114 The Indians in Yosemite, while selling traditional songs and dances as well as baskets to tourists, yet maintained more of their own independent life in the valley, perhaps because they were not organized by the railroad, as at Grand Canyon and Glacier. In Yellowstone, the lack of native peoples was axiomatic. Superintendent Norris stated, “the isolation of the park . . . and the superstitious awe of the roaring cataracts, sulphur pools, and spouting geysers over the surrounding pagan Indians, [caused them to] seldom visit [Yellowstone],”115 a false understanding that was perpetuated as part of the Park narrative until nearly the end of the twentieth century. At the same time Norris and others were saying this they were continuing efforts to deal with the resident Indian “problem” in the Park. In fact, many tribes including Shoshone, Bannock, Crow, and Sheepeater had long used the area on a seasonal basis both for food and for ceremonial materials and sites. Certainly Indian “incidents” contributed to this need to make native peoples invisible, including and most notably the Nez Perce attempt to escape the U.S. Army by traveling through Yellowstone on their way to Canada in 1877, during which they took tourists hostage. Emma Cowen’s narrative of this event constitutes the only captivity narrative set in a park.116 To enable tourists to feel safe in Yellowstone they were assured that not only were there no Indians in the Park, but none had ever been there. Little notice was paid to native peoples in the early 1880s, with park literature and visitors’ diaries demonstrating “an almost complete lack of interest in Yellowstone’s native history”117 This lack of interest stems at least in part from the fact that the presence of American Indians did not fit the mythic narrative.

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The story of the Frontier in Glacier and the Great Unknown in the Grand Canyon, including the story of their Native Americans in very different ways, provided a narrative that gave expression to American identity and the orienting values of the culture, not only in relation to the crisis of late modernity, but also to the deep-seated beliefs that have been part of the American story. However, although this traditional vision is affi rmed, the pilgrimage to Grand Canyon and Glacier may also have offered opportunities for breaking out of old ways of seeing. No doubt the ruins in Grand Canyon—both living and geological—and the reenactment of the Frontier in Glacier encouraged searching for safety away from the modern world, imagining a place-time where everything fit together in order to relieve the anxiety of modern life. But perhaps the “great out of doors” dimension of the experience encouraged more active living and broke down some of the constraints embedded in traditional society. In this way the pilgrimage may have provided the opportunity for reexamining cultural values and beliefs rather than simply providing a temporary escape from the “real world.” We do see a variety of “protests” against traditional ways. In addition to the great outdoors and its challenge to gender conventions, voices like that of Theodore Roosevelt calling for “conservation” for future generations began to be heard. Architectural styles defied conventional forms as American artists attempted to create the “American” style. Antimodernism and anti-industrialism, although often practiced by those who most fully enjoyed them, were displayed in the park in a way that might have allowed their contradictions to become apparent and provided the occasion to work through them. Dilworth questions this, saying, “What the spectacle of Indian life in Fred Harvey’s Southwest offered was not a connection with authenticity that would bring an end to nostalgia and longing but the maintenance and celebration of difference and distance, which produced nostalgia and longing.”118 As we see how the parks develop and respond to cultural issues we will consider whether they offer an escape from the real problems back home or provide alternative ways of seeing the world.

4

The National Park Idea

With the establishment of the National Park Service in 1916, “See America First” became the slogan of the national government and national parks were officially designated as representative sites of America. As western boosters had used the term to promote local sights1 and the Northern Pacific had used it to sell tours to Glacier, the National Park Service made it its business to sell tourists on spending their summer vacations visiting America’s national parks. Threatened by utilitarian conservation’s emphasis on productive use of natural resources, the “National Park Idea” was developed and sold as contributing to the character, welfare, and education of Americans and therefore essential to the preservation and productivity of the United States. At this point the national parks, both as advanced by the sellers and as received by the consumers, most closely and openly approximated the icons and pilgrimage sites of a national religious shrine. The story of the establishment of the National Park Service became a second origin story for the national parks, suggesting a new beginning as the campfi re story had done in the nineteenth century.

PRELUDE TO THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE NATIONAL PARK SERVICE The establishment of a “National Park Service” as overseer and unifier of all the parks and monuments, which was necessary for the National Park Idea to develop as it did, was not automatic and was not accomplished without conflict. The “National Park Idea” is a phrase used to refer, somewhat vaguely, to a set of American values that included many of the ideas we saw in the establishment of Yosemite, Yellowstone, Grand Canyon, and Glacier National Parks. With Olmsted, the democratic virtue of creating “pleasuring grounds” not just for the elite, but for all people, was part of this Idea; and the resulting aesthetic experience would enable all people to be good citizens in the democracy. The connection of America’s greatness with its land was also present and, in particular, the mythic belief that the virgin land out of which U.S. American democracy had developed could be

The National Park Idea 117 set aside and preserved so that all Americans could participate in the power of that primal land. Often this included homologizing the pristine land with the frontier, so the parks could also be seen as preserving that foundational era of American history. Although, as Frederick Jackson Turner had noted before the turn of the century, the loss of the frontier was the loss of what had made Americans American, 2 the National Park Idea affi rmed the process could continue in the preserved islands of the parks. A third element of the National Park Idea was an evocation of the virtuous and idealistic American nation. Although driven by progress and materialism, by the conquering of lands and people, America was at heart God’s country and was dedicated to democratic and generally “Christian” values. Thus, the National Park Idea could stand side by side with the virtues of capitalism, competition, and Manifest Destiny, even though they were obviously in conflict in significant ways. The Idea also built on the outdoors movement at the end of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, which associated health, good character, vitality, and virility with time spent in the out-of-doors, away from the polluting effects of the city on body and mind; and the national parks were preeminent representations of the out-of-doors. The flaming of patriotism at the end of the nineteenth century and through the war years was also associated with national parks, as they embodied the American values for which the country was fighting. So to visit a park or experience it vicariously through books or pictures was an act of patriotism. The argument was also made that national parks could provide American young men with the physical fitness and strength of character they would need to fight in the war. In the early twentieth century the need for a central authority to oversee and to defend these ideas became clear because of external pressures, as conservation and preservation were articulated as confl icting models. Internal pressures were also at work as problems managing the parks arose. A third factor leading to the establishment of a bureau to manage parklands was the public outrage over the damming of Hetch Hetchy Valley in Yosemite National Park. When the Forest Reserve clause was quietly inserted in a land reform bill in 1891, enabling the President to set aside any forest lands he deemed necessary, conservationists of various stripes all heartily approved. Their common commitment to stop the destruction of forests and protect lands from private development and unrestricted abuse made them common enemies to westerners who saw any reservation of lands as a restriction on their free enterprise.3 In 1896 the National Forest Commission was called on to tour the rapidly diminishing American forests and report on what should be their proper care. Conservationist Gifford Pinchot, a member of the Commission, was on the tour, but so was preservationist John Muir; and reportedly the two of them saw their “dedication to nature and the outdoors” as more important than their differences over preservation and use.4 As told from Pinchot’s point of view in Breaking New Ground, when he met with the Commission

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to begin the tour, “To my great delight, John Muir was with them. . . . I took to him at once.” At the Grand Canyon they “spent an unforgettable day on the rim of the prodigious chasm, letting it soak in” as the rest of the group drove off to visit a scenic sight. They enjoyed the view and their conversation so much they did not return to the hotel that night, much to the worry and anger of their compatriots. “So we made our beds of cedar boughs in a thick stand that kept the wind away, and there we talked until midnight. It was such an evening as I have never had before or since.”5 All people interested in conservation shared an uphill battle in presenting a viable alternative to the value of unrestrained growth that dominated the country. Pinchot’s biographer, Char Miller, reminds us that “a vocabulary of restraint did not yet exist. A new rhetoric had to be created that would, through a set of scientific, economic, and political principles, establish a different relationship between humans and the land on which they lived”— and I would add, through ethical, spiritual, and aesthetic principles as well. It was on the rhetoric that Pinchot and Muir parted ways. Pinchot’s rhetoric “rested on the conviction that the nation’s natural resources and agricultural production were interwoven parts of a whole.”6 Muir’s, on the other hand, stressed the connection of humans—body and spirit—with nature and shared with the National Park Idea the goal of preservation to meet the nation’s needs for spiritual resources as well as economic ones. As Muir says in “The Wild Parks and Forest Reservations of the West”: “The tendency nowadays to wander in wildernesses is delightful to see. Thousands of tired, nerve-shaken, overcivilized people are beginning to fi nd out that going to the mountains is going home; that wildness is a necessity; and that mountain parks and reservations are useful not only as fountains of timber and irrigating rivers, but as fountains of life.”7 The contrasting goals that these discourses supported became clearer after the turn of the century.8 In 1902 the Reclamation Service was established, followed in 1905 by the Forest Service, which was transferred at Chief Forester Gifford Pinchot’s urging from Interior to the Department of Agriculture, giving the clear message that the forests should be managed as crops rather than ‘preserved for the enjoyment of the people.’ Pinchot’s conflicts with the National Park Idea are clearly seen when he says in Fight for Conservation: “The fi rst duty of the human race is to control the earth it lives upon.” The National Park Idea affi rmed in principle—whether or not it could be put into practice—that American nature that was not controlled was vital to the well-being of the nation. However, one area of overlap was in the commitment to democracy that each claimed. “Conservation,” Pinchot said, “is the most democratic movement this country has known for a generation.” Conservation, he believed, “is a moral issue, and the heart of it is this: For whose benefit shall our natural resources be conserved—for the benefit of us all, or for the use and profit of the few?”9 Democracy was also at the heart of the National Park Idea: These lands belonged to all Americans and should be preserved so all might enjoy them.10

The National Park Idea 119 The Forest Service’s focus on the usefulness of land was, of course, not new. From the very beginning with Yellowstone (and earlier with Yosemite), arguments in Congress for the establishment of a national park always began with the assurance that the park would be made up of “worthless lands.” Because the land could not be used for forestry, agriculture, mining, settlements, or any other productive human purpose, it might as well be set apart as a national park for the enjoyment of the people. Nonetheless, the assumption was that should the land prove not to be useless, it would cease to be a national park. In the 1910 bill establishing Glacier National Park, under pressure from the Forest Service and Bureau of Reclamation, Congress amended the bill to include explicit language allowing for “mining, settlement, reclamation, and sustained-yield forestry” if they would be useful or profitable. Similarly, the Rocky Mountain National Park Bill in 1915 expressly allowed access for railroads, prospectors, and reclamation, as necessary.11 The increasingly powerful voice of utilitarian conservation threatened to subsume national parks under its guidelines, as Pinchot had wanted to do institutionally since the Forest Service was established. A second factor leading to the establishment of the National Park Service was the bureaucratic inconsistencies as to who was managing what piece of land. The passage of the Antiquities Act in 1906 increased this problem. As the Forest Reserve Bill had enabled the President to preserve forests by decree, this bill provided the President with the ability to preserve lands for other purposes. The primary reason for John Lacey’s bill was to protect Southwest Indian ruins and artifacts, which were being destroyed or stolen. The bill specified that government lands and artifacts on them which were “of historic or scientific interest” could be reserved by the President as “national monuments.” Lacey and others focused on the destruction of artifacts and history by “pot hunters,” but we can see in the language used in the bill that mythic America is also being invoked. The title of the bill: “An Act for the Preservation of American Antiquities,” clearly asserts that America has an ancient past and explicitly articulates the “cultural nationalism”12 seen from the very fi rst in Yosemite as the wonders of that region were shown to be superior because of size or age to the objects on the Grand Tour in Europe. This is seen again in Grand Canyon’s geology, which revealed the “procession of the ages” and in the ancient people who revealed the prehistory of the human race. However, a new dimension was added here as the Act “was the fi rst law to systematically enable the creation of large-scale nature reserves for scientific (rather than scenic or economic) reasons.”13 This provided a model that would later become part of the management of national parks as well. In addition to requiring permits for removing artifacts from government lands and establishing penalties for those who did not comply, the Act authorized the President to establish as national monuments “historic landmarks, historic and prehistoric structures, and other objects of historic or scientific interest” on government lands, the size being “confi ned to the

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smallest area compatible with proper care and management of the objects to be protected.”14 Theodore Roosevelt used this Act, focusing on geological science, to designate Devil’s Tower a monument in 1906. In 1908, following years of arguing unsuccessfully for Grand Canyon’s status as a national park, Roosevelt expanded the Act’s boundaries by designating the Grand Canyon a national monument. Already a forest reserve, Roosevelt was calling for greater and different forms of conservation. One of the provisions of the Antiquities Act was that monuments were to be managed by the bureau on whose land the monument stood—in the case of Grand Canyon, for example, the Forest Service. Not only was this inevitably a bureaucratic nightmare, but those who wished for the Park Service kind of protection, as opposed to the Forest Service type, were anxious to unify management of the monuments under an agency focusing on preservation rather than “wise use.” The National Park Idea provided the philosophy preservationists believed could do this. But without a centralized agency, there was no way to operationalize this. As the Antiquities Act caused bureaucratic problems, so did the fact that four of the twelve existing parks were managed by the Army and thus reporting to both the Department of Interior and the War Department.15 When war broke out with Mexico in 1911, the War Department called for civilian control. As with national monuments, a central authority was needed to make and manage this transfer. Interior thought it should be the National Park Service, although the Forest Service thought it could do the better job because they knew how to manage the forests that dominated many of the parks.16 A third element that led to a fuller articulation of the “National Park Idea” and contributed to the establishment of the National Park Service was the debate over Hetch Hetchy. In 1890 the mountainous area surrounding Yosemite Valley (which was still a state preserve) was declared a national park. Included in this was the Hetch Hetchy Valley, through which the Tuolumne River flowed and which was a desirable site for a reservoir to provide water and electricity to San Francisco. Hetch Hetchy became the locus for strident debate about what form conservation should take in the United States and, indeed, what the designation National Park meant. The debate was national, with representatives of various outdoors and hunting groups, women’s groups, scientific societies, and educators speaking out against the bill that would allow California to make use of Yosemite National Park in this way. Gifford Pinchot spoke for the utilitarian conservationists when he said at the Congressional hearings, “the fundamental principle of the whole conservation policy is that of use, to take every part of the land and its resources and put it to that use in which it will serve the most people.”17 Those opposed to Hetch Hetchy reaffi rmed the sacred values the parks were said to embody, including the preservation of spectacular American land for the American people. An argument that speaks to the antimodern

The National Park Idea 121 and anticommercialism emphases of the time that became attached to the National Park Idea was the assertion that the United States should stand for something beyond economic success. At the hearings one person asked, “is there nothing to be held sacred by this nation; . . . are we to be cramped in soul and mind by the lust after filthy lucre only; shall we be left some of the more glorious places?” And another challenged: “May we live down our national reputation for commercialism.” A Brooklyn newspaper editorial said “keeping Hetch Hetchy wild was an opportunity to answer the taunts of detractors and demonstrated ‘that there are some things even in America which money cannot buy.’”18 In a variety of voices the message was that utilitarian and economic interests were not enough. In attempting to assert what was needed instead, speakers turned to the language of religion. John Muir’s language about nature and especially the nature of the national parks was fi lled with overtly religious references as he tried to point to what the national parks offered beyond economic worth: “Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where Nature may heal and cheer and give strength to body and soul alike.” Speaking against the proponents of damming the valley he said, “These temple destroyers, devotees of ravaging commercialism, seem to have a perfect contempt for Nature, and, instead of lifting their eyes to the God of the mountains, lift them to the Almighty Dollar.”19 Similarly, Robert Underwood Johnson, associate editor of the Century literary magazine and ardent supporter and “spiritual lobbyist” for preservation of the national parks, took on the prophet’s voice in an “Open Letter to the American People” as he called Hetch Hetchy “a veritable temple of the living God, and again the money-changers are in the temple!” He condemned those who would focus on material at the cost of spiritual values, again using Biblical references: “The spectacle of thus parceling out the resources of one of God’s most beautiful creations has had no counterpart since the casting of lots for the raiment of Jesus.”20 Preservationist J. Horace McFarland, founder and President of the American Civic Association, took the plea to governmental agencies. At Pinchot’s utilitarian-oriented Governors’ Conference on the Conservation of Natural Resources, he “spoke of God’s refuge ‘in the very bosom of nature, to which we may flee from the noise and strain of the market-place for that renewing of spirit and strength which cannot be had elsewhere.’”21 When he spoke before Interior, in the spirit of his “city beautiful” philosophy that brought together recreation, healthy living, and spiritual strength, he argued the increasing importance of natural spaces like national parks as more people lived in cities. This was important in a practical way, he argued, just as having timber and water power was important. Addressing utilitarian conservationists he asserted, “The primary function of the national parks is to maintain in healthful efficiency the lives of the people.”22 The widespread call for the preservation of Hetch Hetchy demonstrates the popularity of nature preservation at the beginning of the twentieth

122 Pilgrimage to the National Parks century, using both aesthetic and out-of-doors arguments to assert the importance of nature for the health of body and spirit. Although the bill passed and Hetch Hetchy became a reservoir, large numbers of people had been introduced to ideas of nature preservation and the alarm had been sounded. If this could happen to Yosemite, was any wilderness area safe? Was Hetch Hetchy, in fact, the death knell for the National Park Idea? To the contrary, many of the legislators who voted for the bill also expressed their support of preservation of wilderness areas, with only a few using this opportunity to dismiss the National Park Idea. James Reed of Missouri best expressed the antithesis of the National Park Idea when he spoke near the close of the debate to express his incredulity at the whole controversy. “How could it be, he wondered, that over the future of a piece of wilderness ‘the Senate goes into profound debate, the country is thrown into a condition of hysteria.’ . . . This was clearly ‘much ado about little.’”23 Reed’s point calls attention to the rather unexpected importance to many “progress-oriented” Americans of values that lay outside economic development and of the mythic power of the parks to embody these values. In this process of developing the National Park Idea, a new element crept in. Subtly included in the arguments was a move beyond the “worthless lands” proposition that had been part of national park discourse from the beginning. In the face of utilitarian conservation, the usefulness of the parks had to be asserted. They were no longer worthless lands, but vital to the health, efficiency, and prosperity of the nation. Using the language of the marketplace—efficiency, productivity, competition, profit, development— the preservationists laid claim to the necessity of parks for the nation’s prosperity as they argued for the establishment of a national bureau to oversee the parks. In this move we see the “shrine” as not simply an embodiment of the idealist position, but inclusive of the confl icting values of a larger America. The clash between these seemingly disconnected views is at the heart of the National Park Idea. If national parks were to function as pilgrimage sites for the whole nation, they would have to be inclusive of the whole story of Americans and their land. What we will see develop in the National Park Idea is the inclusion of confl icting ideals of what America is and should be. Nature preserved in the parks represented an America that was not (only) devoted to materialism and progress, but (also) to ideals that grounded America in the spiritual power of the pristine land out of which, under the Creator’s hand, democracy had emerged.

SELLING THE NATIONAL PARK IDEA We see these threads being interwoven at conferences sponsored by the Department of the Interior to create support for a bureau between 1910 and 1916. Participants included those interest groups who could improve

The National Park Idea 123 the parks in ways that would make them more attractive to visitors and who would, in turn, profit from the success of the parks. This included not only various concessionaires and railroads, long the friends of national parks, but also automobile associations who would become primary promoters for the parks. All seemed to agree with the description of “parks as scenic places for public recreation, enjoyment, and edification . . . [and] the national parks movement as a ‘campaign for natural scenery.’” Landscape architect Mark Daniels asserted “’Economics and esthetics’” were the only justifications for parks and that they went “’hand in hand.’” Louis Hill, Great Northern president and promoter of Glacier National Park strongly encouraged the government to become much more involved in the promotion of national parks.24 They were about tourism and had to be “sold” before the tourists would come. This did not deny the importance of aesthetics, but to enable the tourists to appreciate them, the parks had to provide improved roads and trails as well as diversions such as tennis, golf, skiing, and swimming pools. Thus, the campaign for national parks became a business. Businessman Stephen Mather was enlisted by Secretary of the Interior Franklin Lane to promote this business. He sought the support of business and industry and felt very comfortable using the language of business to talk about how the parks should be run more efficiently and how to attract more customers to them. Horace Albright joined him and Robert Sterling Yard became the publicist for the campaign. The tone of the appeal is seen in Yard’s article in The Nation’s Business titled “Making a Business of Scenery” and in Mather’s “The National Parks on a Business Basis.” Key to running this business efficiently was the creation of a central bureau to manage it. Different strategies were devised to sell the idea of the bureau both to the government and the public. As the railroads had done, photographic displays were used to bring the landscape to life. As a sign of the new times, moving pictures of various parks, funded by the Department of Interior as well as railroads and others, were distributed as the “See America First” series.25 The National Parks Portfolio provided another important form of publicity. Mather’s director of publicity, Robert Sterling Yard, put together the fi rst edition of the long-running publication in 1916, with Secretary of Interior Franklin Lane writing the Introduction. Repeating the standard themes of the National Park Idea, he asserted that not only does the nation thrive in commerce, it “does more; it furnishes playgrounds to the people that are . . . without any rivals in the world.”26 Acknowledging the closing of Europe because of the war as a necessary condition to awaken Americans to the wonders of their own land, he appealed to the patriotism of Americans to support the parks. The 1915 PanamaPacific International Exposition in San Francisco, which also used the “See America First” theme, had increased knowledge of and enthusiasm for the national parks, as the railroads re-created replicas of the Grand Canyon, along with El Tovar and a Pueblo village “depicting the ‘Life of a Vanishing

124 Pilgrimage to the National Parks Race.’” Yellowstone was re-created through Old Faithful Geyser and “‘the crowning feature,’” Old Faithful Inn.27 Now these wonders should be seen in person. In addition to the scenic wonders Lane also mentions “public health” as a value of the parks. Finally, he brings in science as he says, “It is the destiny of the national parks, if wisely controlled, to become the public laboratories of nature study for the nation.”28 The Portfolio itself included descriptions and stunning pictures of each of the existing parks and some monuments, each presented as a spectacle, waiting to be experienced. In the Yellowstone section Yard noted that this park is “not only the wonderland that common report describes; it is also the fitting playground and pleasure resort of a great people; it is also the ideal summer school of nature study.”29 Pictures of scenic wonders, mountains and lakes, wild life, cottages and hotels, and recreation from fishing to skiing and horseback riding spoke to a wide audience, inviting them all to experience and learn from American nature. As Marguerite Shaffer points out, a number of these illustrations “depicted white, middle-class tourists surveying dramatic natural scenery, which reinforced the idea that park landscapes represented national icons that deserved a certain level of reverence.” The Portfolio, then, emphasized in dramatic ways the scenic beauty of the parks and their value to the citizens for health and recreation, science and education. The point to be made was that the parks were “national assets” and this was accomplished, according to Shaffer, by presenting them as “ceremonial landscapes, icons of the nation.”30 Copies of this American testimonial were presented to all of the members of Congress as they considered the National Park Service Bill. Opposition to the proposed bill came from the Forest Service, including Gifford Pinchot, who, dismissing the National Park Idea, saw similar management issues between national parks and forests and argued that the parks should be placed under the Forest Service.31 Western users were also opposed, fearing grazing rights might be curtailed or more restrictions put on mining or water development. Nonetheless, the Organic Act establishing the National Park Service (NPS) within the Department of the Interior was passed in 1916. Although the events described above contributed to its relatively easy passage, compromises had to be made to accept the interests of both westerners and other government agencies. In its fi nal form the language of the Organic Act included the fundamentals of the National Park Idea, which now had interwoven in it the utilitarian context in which the act was written. Together with the “Lane Letter,” written two years later, which elaborates on the Act, this became the blue print for the NPS for almost a century.32 The Act specified that the purpose of the Service shall be to “promote and regulate the use of the Federal areas known as national parks [and] monuments . . . to conserve the scenery and the natural and historic objects and the wild life therein 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

The National Park Idea 125 future generations.”33 The Lane Letter emphasized the lands shall be “maintained in absolutely unimpaired form.”34 The classical heart of the National Park Idea—preservation of scenery—was reaffirmed, although the addition of monuments required the inclusion of “historic objects” to the statement of purpose.35 The Lane Letter attempted to restrict the designation of parklands to true national icons, which have “scenery of supreme and distinctive quality or some national feature so extraordinary or unique as to be of national interest and importance.” The protection of wildlife in the Act (although not mentioned in the Lane Letter) was an addition indicating the beginnings of a move beyond scenery—both out of concern for the decline of animal populations and because large animals were proving to be of interest to tourists. However, Section 3 modified the protection of flora and fauna by permitting the destruction of animal and plant life that were detrimental to the enjoyment of the park (for example, predators that kill elk). Focusing on the “enjoyment of the people,” the Lane Letter specified that roads, trails, and buildings were allowed as long as they harmonized with the landscape; thus landscape engineers would become central in shaping the construction of the parks. It also encouraged all human activities that would increase enjoyment of the parks, including the use of motorized vehicles and all sports except hunting. Along with recreation, education was stressed and schools would be encouraged to make use of the parks as educational facilities and museums would be established. However, the only mention of science, as Richard Sellars points out, is to specify that the NPS will utilize the government’s “scientific bureaus” as needed.36 Clearly, Mather wished to promote the parks, and preservationists including John Muir joined him in believing the more tourists the better. To get funding from Congress they had to demonstrate that the parks served a large number of Americans well. But how should they be “accommodated and entertained” in ways that would leave the parks “absolutely unimpaired”? As a concession to westerners the Act allowed grazing in all parks except Yellowstone, provided it did not create a situation detrimental to the primary purpose of the park: the enjoyment of the people. The greatest concessions in the Act were made in Section 4, which asserted that this Act would do nothing to change the rights-of-way act of 1901, which allowed activities that were needed to “promote irrigation or mining or quarrying, or the manufacturing or cutting of timber” provided that such activities were not “incompatible with the public interest.”37 Horace Albright’s praise of the Organic Act as a way of preventing future Hetch Hetchys was unrealistic since the same arguments could be used under the rights-of-way clause as enabled the reservoir to be built. 38 Although this right was withdrawn by Congress in 1920, its presence in the Organic Act, highly touted as a victory for those who would preserve the parks, reveals the continuing presence of utilitarian conservation. To sell this vision of the national parks, Stephen Mather as Director of the new National Park Service, launched a promotional campaign designed

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to bring the meaning of the parks into common cultural understanding in order to establish them as national icons. To receive governmental support, it was essential that both tourists and the government be convinced that the National Park Idea was a worthy one. The publicity continued to emphasize the preservation of national scenic wonders because of the spiritual value of noneconomically focused experience for the citizens of the country, while at the same time, the economic value of the parks was argued. In these conflicting arguments (made by different individuals, as well as within one person’s rationale), we see the parks embodying the confl icting values of the country. What held them together, if only loosely, was the connection of the parks with democracy: both individual well-being and the communal well-being of the nation were goals of the parks. As part of the promotional literature in the fi rst years of the Park Service, Enos Mills published Your National Parks in 1917 and in 1919 Yard published The Book of the National Parks, both of which emphasized different versions of the myth of America and thus different approaches to selling the parks. Enos Mills, who was instrumental in the establishment of Rocky Mountain National Park, opens his story of the parks with the Louisiana Purchase and the Lewis and Clark Expedition, presenting the frontier experience as central to the American nation. Even though the frontier was gone, “Yet, in our magnificent National Parks we still have a bit of the primeval world and the spirit of the vigorous frontier.” This frontier-asprimeval-American-past is also seen in the Yellowstone section of the book, which opens with the Campfi re Story and he later says, “I wish that every one might have a night by a camp-fi re at Mother Nature’s hearthstone.” His mythic story invites his readers to journey on a pilgrimage back to America’s origins, which is found in the national parks. Nationalism is central to his view. He sees nature itself, as well as the parks, as confi rming democracy in welcoming all people; and the “mingling of all classes in the Parks is a veritable blessing,” as is bringing the nation—from easterners to westerners—together.39 Alongside this traditional language about parks, he also includes market language—clearly responding to utilitarian arguments for land management. He talks about building up a “scenic industry” and says scenery is “one of our most valuable resources” and largely “undeveloped.” His statement “why we need National Parks” brings these confl icting values together and further portrays the parks as a timeless realm which is the heart of the nation and the source of national unity. Calling a national park “a matchless potential factor for good in national life,” he says, “it holds within its magic realm benefits that are health-giving, educational, economic; that further efficiency and ethical relations, and are inspirational. . . . To save ourselves, to prevent our perishing, to enable us to live at our best and happiest, parks are necessary.”40 This portrayal of the national parks as the heart of the American nation and the American spirit allowed them to be seen as pilgrimage sites where

The National Park Idea 127 visitors might enter an enchanted time out of time, and through the powers of American wilderness, restore themselves and their nation. That Americans would be healthier and more efficient because of this retreat acknowledges that business is still the real business of America. But in the national park, in this “enchanted place,” Americans could, without denying their dedication to progress, affirm a mythic ideal—that America’s origins are in the primeval power of the wilderness; that the wilderness is also the frontier, where American virtues are produced; and that both of these are the source and power for the continuation of American democracy. Therefore, parks become the embodiment of the democratic nation. In his 1919 Book of the National Parks, Robert Sterling Yard presents his park philosophy in a way meant to counter utilitarian conservation (and the Forest Service) by emphasizing the usefulness of educating people through the parks, primarily by the science of geology. His aim is to “translate the practical fi ndings of science” so as to “enable the reader to appreciate [the parks’] importance, scope, meaning, beauty, manifold uses and enormous value to individual and nation.” The parks are not “just scenery,” nor are they “principally playgrounds,” he insists. Recreation and emotion are important, but only through science can the scenery be understood and appreciated. His mythic story affi rms the practical heart of America, but expands it to include the value, both patriotic and personal, in understanding and appreciating America’s resources.41 However, his mythic story goes further. As he goes on to describe national parks as known through scientific understanding, explicitly religious language is brought in, much like the language traditionally found in praise of sublime nature: “Here the visitor enters in a holier spirit. . . . The spirit of the great places brooks nothing short of silent reverence. . . . The mind strips itself of affairs as one sheds a coat. It is the hour of the spirit. One returns to daily living with a springier step, a keener vision, and a broader horizon for having worshipped at the shrine of the Infi nite.” Not only are the sacred stories of the origin of America revealed, but because each park presents “the supreme example of its kind,” the “History of Creation” is “written” in America’s national parks as “they are among the completest expressions of the earth’s history.”42 The special Creation of America links it in a special relationship to the Creator. And science is the link to the Creation and the Creator. As with the literature on the Grand Canyon, the discourse of the national parks is not based in either science or religion alone. Rather they go together, infused with nationalism. Both of these mythic visions of nature and America, although different, promote the parks as “ceremonial landscapes” in which the meaning of America and being an American are embodied and enacted. This rhetoric is found throughout park promotional literature with continuing emphasis on both the economic and the spiritual, with the salvatory results of visits to the parks being both rejuvenation of the individual and of the nation. Mather’s 1921 Annual Director’s Report on the fi fth anniversary of the

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NPS reconfi rms the sense of ceremonial landscapes as he says, “Parks are stabilizing and inspiring influences in times of national restlessness.” Both men and women, he says, stressing the inclusive nature of the ceremony, will be rejuvenated, and so will the nation. The parks are “fi rst in worthwhile things in our national life that make for better citizens. . . . There is no fi ner opportunity in the Americanization movement than to spread the gospel of the parks far and wide.” The presentation of the national parks as having the power to strengthen the infrastructure of the nation, provide its spiritual center, and link its citizens in community demonstrates the selling of the parks as American sacred space in the fi rst decades of the Park Service. We will look at the development of a mythic thread which encouraged this narrative and then look at how this version of the National Park Idea got enacted within the parks—what ritual forms those who pilgrimaged to the sacred places undertook and how much the Idea controlled the experience.

A SECOND ORIGIN STORY The Yellowstone Campfi re Story is often told as the origin story of the parks, founding them on the generosity and devotion to democracy of a group of entrepreneurs and the power of American nature, as discussed in Chapter 2. This story does not disappear, but what we fi nd in Yard’s Book of the National Parks and in the general leadership of the Park Service at this time is a different version of the story. Now it is the establishment of the National Park Service that provides the origin story. The motives of the founders are similar: they are dedicated to providing the outdoor experience of the parks to the nation that thereby the nation and the nation’s people will be better citizens, with increased “individual power and national efficiency.”43 But there are some interesting differences, as well. Origin stories serve as a way of focusing power and meaning, providing not so much literal historical fact, but the meaning of foundational moments in a culture’s life. Origin stories unify those who share them and establish sites of authority. We can see the power beyond the literal as we note that the “facts” presented do not have to be true to be convincing. Evidence for Yard’s identification of the National Park Service as originator is seen in his assertion that before the Park Service, parks were not available for human use. “Originally,” he says, “the motive in park-making had been unalloyed conservation. It is as if Congress had said: ‘Let us lock this up where no one can run away with it; we don’t need it now, but some day it may be valuable.’”44 Although the contemporary environmental movement would sometimes like to think that the motive behind national parks was conservation, we have seen that they were, from the very fi rst, tourist attractions promoted by entrepreneurs. The railroads’ foundational role in the establishment of the early parks clearly indicates they were not

The National Park Idea 129 to be locked away from people, but to be the playground of American elites, as the enabling acts clearly indicated. Yard also asserts that before 1915, the year of the Panama-Pacific Exposition and Mather’s hiring by Interior to promote a bureau of national parks, scarcely any Americans knew about national parks or the greatness of their scenery. Although the creation of models of the parks for exhibit in San Francisco did indeed make a splash, national parks were promoted before then at travel shows (the 1913 New York Travel Show, e.g.) and through the long arms of railroad publicity from the early 1880s on. Even earlier, magazine articles about travels to Yosemite and Yellowstone, and photographs and traveling art shows broadcast the glories of the parks. And many people responded, with over 20,000 visiting Yellowstone each year between 1911 and 1914. What is new with the National Park Service, though, is the active role of the government in promoting and fi nancially supporting the parks. Partly because of this, there is no question that numbers of visitors rose dramatically after 1915 (51,000 in Yellowstone in 1915 and 62,000 in 1919). Quite apart from the NPS, other factors contributing to this growth were the outdoors movement, which had been a growing force in American culture since the end of the nineteenth century; the national interest in the Hetch Hetchy controversy; and—perhaps foremost—the automobile. Although Yard is right that the national parks became more popular with the establishment of the NPS, his implicit assumption that the National Park Idea did not exist before 1915 is an interpretation that gives the power of origin to the government. In the NPS origin story the park idea does not come from individuals around a campfi re, embodying the spirit of the country in their democratic ideals, but from a government institution, officially representing the nation. This gives the parks, as he says, an official “national character.”45 The fi rst origin story spoke more to the spirit of “America”; the second is grounded in a narrower nationalism. Although Kathy Mason’s study of national parks between 1872 and 1916 argues that “Congress, park superintendents, and the American public had formulated general, often tacit, notions concerning the purpose of the parks long before the park service was created,” 46 interestingly, other scholars often participate in this National Park Service origin story. Runte, for example, suggests that Mather and Yard in their lobbying and educational efforts offered a new view of national parks. “In 1922 [Mather] expanded scenic appreciation by saying ‘Americans were awakening to the realization that the national parks embodied in actual reality . . . a mighty system of national museums of the primitive American wilderness.’” 47 As we have seen language of the primitive was not new with Mather, but was present in abundance as the language of primal wilderness used by both Grinnell and Hill in Glacier National Park. Museum language is found, for example, in Major John Bigelow Jr.’s 1904 annual Superintendent’s report describing the construction of an arboretum and botanical garden in Yosemite. “He believed that one of the essential purposes of the Yosemite

130 Pilgrimage to the National Parks forest reservation was to provide a museum of nature for the general public free of cost, to display not only trees, but everything associated with them in nature, including animals, minerals, and geological features.”48 Nonetheless, scholarly literature on the uniqueness of NPS claims is found, for example, as Shaffer sees Yard developing the defi nition of “parks as representative of a distinctly American homeland. . . . Now the parks were more than just economic assets, they were also [natural laboratories and] quintessentially American landscapes.”49 Although the war no doubt encouraged a more specifically patriotic response to the parks, I argue that the assertion that this set-aside nature embodied America was fundamental to the designation of scenic landscapes as national parks from the fi rst; and their value as more than economic assets was always asserted. Both origin stories share the mythic value of such narratives in providing an ordering center for placing oneself in a meaningful world of nature and nation and are important mythic expressions of the U.S., but it is interesting that the literature, both governmental and scholarly, gives precedence to the governmental institution and minimizes the earlier and more amorphous associations of nature and nation in the national parks. However, in both we see “new beginnings” for the self-understanding of the United States. After the Civil War there was a new sense of the collectivity of “these United States” and in the literature of the popular media—that is, magazines read by educated elite and photographs viewed by an even larger audience—Yellowstone as “the nation’s park” became a sign of this new sense of nation. With the end of World War I, the expansion of travel and commerce with the automobile and consequent highway system, and the expansion of the U.S. role in the world, a new sense of nation developed. Once again the national parks served as an embodiment of this new meaning, seen in a very literal way as the first transcontinental highway was named the Yellowstone Trail, and began as a way to link national parks for tourist visitations. Americans were connected by their highways and their parks. No doubt part of the original reason for giving the NPS the power of creation was to strengthen it in its rivalries with the Forest Service. Another reason was to wrest power from the railroads that had control of assets in most of the parks. The establishment of an overarching bureau changed the relations of parks to the government, as Shaffer notes, by “separating individual parks from the independent railroad corporations that had developed them” and in the process “constructing an official image of the parks as a system of national landscapes.”50 So a consequence of this origin story was to institutionalize the parks as embodiments of American nationalism that could make Americans better and more productive citizens. The embodiment of these foundational beliefs in the national parks prepared them in the early decades of the twentieth century to act as sacred sites for an American public religion more fully than at any other time. The continuing recognition of the NPS origin story among scholars indicates the force this association of the parks as sacred national landscapes still has. .

The National Park Idea 131 AUTOMOBILE PILGRIMAGE—AN ALTERNATIVE NARRATIVE Inherent in the NPS version of the origin story, as in the Yellowstone version, was the centrality of the people who visited the parks. Mather wanted to make the parks available to all Americans—for the parks were the icons of democracy—and he needed to bring a large number of people in order to convince Congress it was economically viable to fund the parks. Both of these goals meant that people not only had to be convinced that they were worth visiting, they also had to be affordable for more than the elite to visit. Furthermore, all who came had to have an experience that was pleasurable and/or meaningful enough to take their enthusiasm back to their neighbors and for them to want to return themselves. As early as 1915 Mather had realized that the automobile was key to both democracy and economics and saw the necessity of creating roads and facilities that could receive the automobiles when they came. Promoting Mather’s ideas on parks, democracy, and national consciousness, President Taft encouraged support for the parks in Congress by saying, “every consideration of patriotism and the love of nature and of beauty and of art requires us to expend money enough to bring all of these natural wonders within easy reach of the people.” However, even earlier, in 1913 Lord James Bryce, a visitor to Yosemite, had warned, “if Adam had known what harm the serpent was going to work, he would have tried to prevent him from finding lodgment in Eden; and if you were to realize what the result of the automobile will be in that incomparable valley, you will keep it out.”51 That was the year automobiles were permitted in Yosemite. By 1915 more travelers to the parks arrived by automobile than by train, and by 1920 the percentage had risen to two-thirds of the more than one million tourists who visited the parks. For better and for worse, the automobile and the parks were wedded. The automobile did indeed bring larger numbers and a broader range of people to the parks, thus exposing more Americans to the unifying project of the National Park Service. As Shaffer says, “The Park Service was essentially advocating a kind of secular pilgrimage where tourists could actually see and experience the nation’s shrines and thereby reaffi rm their love of country and their connection to the nation.”52 But in the process the National Park Idea overflowed the boundaries of the NPS as the free spirit enabled by and expressed in the automobile translated itself into variations on the pilgrimage rituals the National Park Idea suggested. The automobile not only provided physical access to places out of the ordinary, but came to symbolize and embody individualism, freedom, and adventure. Thus, the automobile pilgrimage took on an interesting combination of community bonding and individual freedom. This freedom often included the self-sufficiency provided by carrying the gear necessary to camp by the side of the road or in a municipal motor camp. An article in Outlook in 1924 celebrated the new sport of “autocamping.” Referring to the activity also as “automobile gypsying,” Frank Brimmer

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Figure 4.1 Cars lined up for more than 1/2 mile waiting for a chance to get a permit, 1927. (Yosemite NPS Library RL-5850.)

asserted that in twenty years the automobile revolutionized the American vacation.53 It gave people a sense of freedom and the ability to shape their personal tour. Unlike the railroad journey, cars “brought tourists into the landscape,” allowing them to “actually experience both nature and history. . . . Touring came to be understood as a much more intimate, personal, and authentic experience.”54 Firsthand experience and the assertion of individualism were, then, core values in automobile tourism. Brimmer admits that some argued that the “wanderlust” the auto encouraged might free people too much “from the bonds of hearthstone” and might make us “a communalminded nation,”55 interestingly combining the community and individual values. Indeed, these things seem to be the very draw of being on the road. He applauded the sport as opening up the great outdoors for all people. Just as Yard would have wanted, we see in the touring narratives the commemoration of “the democratic community of the road.” Of special note in this “everybody” are women. They shared with men the freedom to take to the open road; what was different was what they were being freed from. The departure was much greater for women immersed in the “cult of domesticity.”56 Nonetheless, this was a limited phenomenon. Only middle- and upper-class citizens could take to the road and it was mostly urban people who were interested in doing so. The “primitive” nature of auto camping was quite a “sophisticated appetite” and became a “folkway of an urban society.”57

The National Park Idea 133 Sinclair Lewis’s 1919 novel Open Air presents a portrait of such travels, revealing both the blossoming of democracy and continuing class barriers. The novel also expresses the interesting combination of individual freedom and communal unity. The protagonist is Claire Boltwood, raised in the proper way in wealthy eastern society who comes to discover herself through a trip to Yellowstone. She convinces her father to take a trip West to restore his health and, insisting the chauffeur remain at home, she is the driver as they set off on the Yellowstone Trail from Minnesota to Yellowstone National Park.58 When they are in Yellowstone she decides to leave the hotel, with its boring elites, and spend a night at the Yellowstone Canyon camp where Milt, a garage mechanic who has come to their aid, is staying. Her transformation begins with an experience of the sublime as she and Milt descend into the Canyon and “in the splendor she knew the Panic fear that is the deepest reaction to beauty.” When they return to the rim Milt makes the canyon “real” to her as he explains its geology—so inspiration and science go hand in hand. Having her inner experience jarred in the Canyon and her presumed knowledge and location of people disrupted by Milt, Claire exclaims, “‘There is an America! I’m glad I’ve found it!’” She, Milt, and her rather stuff y father join all the others from the camp around the campfi re and sing together traditional American songs. 59 Although Lewis, a Realist, includes some of the down-to- earth problems of this dream of classless and genderless pilgrimage in America, one is left with a sense of unlimited potential in and of the United States. Hal Rothman, in Devil’s Bargains, supports this vision as he sees the advent of the automobile into the parks creating the possibility for individual freedom. He argues that the hegemonic message of the railroads and concessionaires (The Harvey Company is his dominant example) was limited by the automobile.60 Unlike the park experience as it was scripted by The Harvey Company and other tour companies, auto campers could create their own script, choosing what sights to see and how to see them. Unlike the “Dudes” on a railroad or later an automobile tour, the “Sagebrushers” were not bound to hotels or tour directors. They could camp at “a space on the side of the road” and there fi nd a gap in the “master narrative” the tours would impose and have room to maneuver and create their own “America.”61 Unconcerned about the national unity dimension, seen in Brimmer and Lewis, Rothman stresses the individualism and the heterogeneous possibilities now made possible in the park.62 While there is no question that the car created new modes of possibility for travelers to the parks, I would suggest that neither were those on a tour—whether as part of a mule train into Yosemite Valley or with the Harvey Company in Grand Canyon—so completely bound to their leaders’ scripts, nor were those traveling on their own so completely free of any script as this implies. Both were restrained by cultural expectations expressed in master narratives and both were able to step beyond them. (Claire’s “America” was, after all, the America the NPS hoped she would

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Figure 4.2 Camping in Yosemite Valley, 1927. (Yosemite NPS Library 3485.) A record-breaking 26,000 people visited Yosemite Valley May 29, 1927.

fi nd.) As in all pilgrimage experiences, the liminal does create gaps that make possible individual innovation as well as the more expected reaffi rmation and confi rmation of the mythic master narrative. Part of the ritual can, then, be creating one’s own ritual; and pilgrimage could become a path of self-discovery and self-assertion. As Rothman argues, the automobile brought a new shape to the deeply rooted American mythic tradition of travel as a rite of passage toward self-fulfi llment.63 Thus the narrative of the freedom of the open road led to a gathering in the national parks, wondrous American landscapes that brought together freedom-seeking individuals to celebrate their shared America. This blending—or clashing—of individualism and communality, personal freedom and American nationalism permeates the parks at this time and is key to understanding the function of the parks as pilgrimage sites in this period. Travel promotional literature, whether put out by automobile associations or the U.S. government, emphasized this “American” dimension of automobile travel to the parks. But Shaffer’s study of both this official literature and the literature of those who did the touring reveals that the language of national unity found in the former gave way in the vernacular literature to a desire to feel at home in America. “In their search to discover America, tourists embraced the values of the official culture expressed by prescriptive literature, and they simultaneously altered the official image of national unity with their own concerns and anxieties.”64

The National Park Idea 135 Thus, heterogeneity is built into this model. Contestation and different, incongruous expressions are standard elements of pilgrimage sites, as we saw in the Introduction. John Bodnar asserts the same of patriotic ritual events. “Because numerous interests clash in commemorative events they are inevitably multivocal. They contain powerful symbolic expressions— metaphors, signs, and rituals—that give meaning to competing interpretations of past and present reality.”65 The contesting values can be seen even within the official, seemingly homogenous expression. As Shaffer notes, “Ironically, in a capitalist society wedded to an ideology of progress reliant on private property and extensive natural resources, preserved nature, existing beyond the reach of commerce and industry, came to embody the ideal of the nation. And tourism, defi ned as a patriotic act, became a ritual of citizenship that transformed consumption into civic duty.”66

RITUALS OF THE PILGRIMAGE: AMERICA AROUND THE CAMPFIRE The uneasy alliance between these conflicting values lies at the heart of the National Park Idea but is usually invisible. However, the gaps created by the activities of automobile tourists were more obvious and shaped the response of the NPS as rituals of the pilgrimage developed. We can see a sign of this difference in a 1929 guide to the parks, “Oh, Ranger!” The public face of the parks that was presented around the time of the establishment of the NPS stressed educational and scientific values of the parks, as well as the restorative value of their scenic landscapes. They portrayed the parks as the heart of the nation and the key to national unity. “Oh, Ranger!” while not denying these values, offered a completely different tone that spoke to Mather’s concern for selling the parks as a place to have a good time, as well as attempting to deal with the dramatic changes in the national parks that resulted from the introduction of the automobile. “Oh, Ranger!” was written by Horace Albright (Mather’s right-hand man, who became Director of the NPS when Mather retired in 1929) and Frank Taylor. The book is addressed to tourists, who are identified as “Dudes” and “Sagebrushers.” This jesting use of common slang drew the battle lines between those at the hotels and those in the tents while at the same time laughing at the foolishness of such divisions; it mocked them all as uninitiated city dwellers while warmly inviting them into the special community of the national parks. The meaning of the book’s title is that both Dudes and Sagebrushers are incessantly asking the rangers questions—and the rangers, both friendly and well-informed, are more than happy to provide them with answers. The book is filled with stories, some of them no doubt true, about what the visitor to a park is likely to encounter and how to have the best time possible in the park—while at the same time trying to establish boundaries beyond which the tourists should not go.

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In a chapter on the National Park Service, both origin stories of the national parks are included. While maintaining the values of the NPS origin story, “Oh Ranger!” also includes the story of the Washburn-Langford (Doane) expedition’s commitment to the National Park Idea around the campfi re in Yellowstone. Because the campfi re was by this time a central ritual in the park, using this origin story brought the tourists into the power of that origin, confi rming the “at home” experience the travel literature shows they were seeking. Thus, the campfi re ritual became the symbolic center of the pilgrimage, embodying both the stabilizing ideology of the NPS and the independent “open air” the auto tourist sought. Evening entertainment was common at the hotels, but soon this turned into the ritual event of the bonfi re and by the early 1920s took the form of split logs circled around an open fi re; and not only the campers, but also the hotel guests were lured to the campfi re by the “witchery of the starry sky overhead, the comradery of the camp.”67 Together they sat out-of-doors in front of a campfi re as those who encountered the unsettled land had done before them. The stars, the darkness gave a sense of the beauty and fearful power of nature; the comfort of the fi re and one’s companions provided reassurance and the feeling of being at home in nature, in America. Strangers formed connections with each other, not because of a shared life and death journey over thousands of miles, but through a ritual remembrance of that time. That people from all over the United States could share this campfi re experience evoked, as we see in both personal and institutional literature, a sense of American democracy. Their leader, a ranger dressed in a uniform recalling the days the Army managed the parks and certainly emblematic of the nation, performed the ritual function that brought them together. The leader was a “man of the woods,” who would tell them stories of life in the wilds, lead them in singing, and share knowledge of the natural world that lay around them. With the homey campfi re ritual at the center, other rituals offered interactions with exotic Others that showed that this place was not only home but also a liminal space beyond their ordinary experience. These Others included the scenic wonders that had always evoked the transcendent for visitors to the parks; wild animals—particularly bears—that promised knowledge of the immanent realm ; and Indians—the others who held the intimate secrets of this land of America. Indeed, the power of American nature to revitalize people simply by their presence there, gave all of park life the possibility of being a ritual. These rituals, in a change from the ethereal experience of the sublime that had dominated earlier park culture, involved direct experience of the world at hand. Focusing on Yosemite we will examine examples of these rituals, which affi rmed the unity and greatness of the nation through the grandeur of nature, while at the same time asserting the freedom of the individual and the pleasure of fi nding the gap that escaped the boundaries established by the authoritative discourse of the nation. Rather than just being in confl ict,

The National Park Idea 137 we will see how the desires of the tourists and of the NPS interfaced, shaping each other. We will also see the power of the concessionaries in shaping the rituals of the parks and the disjunction between their goals and the National Park Idea and yet the necessity of the NPS joining the concessionaires in the selling of the parks. The heterogeneity that always pushed the boundaries of the National Park Idea, exposing the tensions and contradictions within it, will be seen in these rituals, as well as suggestions of the new directions that were evolving, including the changes in these rituals in more recent times. Perhaps the most famous campfire—after the original one in Yellowstone—was the evening event staged at Camp Curry in Yosemite. David and Jennie Curry—she was known as “Mother Curry”—were Indiana school teachers who opened their campground in 1899 and relied on a homey, allAmerican atmosphere to make their camp hugely successful. Always at odds with the managers of Yosemite because of asking for the right to develop the camp further, both in size and amenities, and usually succeeding, the Currys provided their guests a “program of complete entertainment.”68 Central to the entertainment was the “Firefall”—burning embers cascading down from Glacier Point. As Mary Curry Tressider, who was five when her parents opened the camp remembered, the campers gathered around a fire at the campground and, after stories and singing, watched in awe the Firefall tumbling down Glacier Point “while everyone sang ‘America.’”69 This spectacle was started in 1870 by James McCauley, who owned the toll trail down from Glacier Point, picked up by Curry in 1899, and it soon became a nightly event, including extensive fireworks. It was ended by the Interior in 1914, because it was deemed a “hazard,” although it may have been related to the controversies between Curry and the Park managers.70 It was resumed in 1917 and remained a central ritual until 1968. A 1967 Yosemite guidebook described the Firefall as a “unique and thrilling spectacle” that visitors cherish “among their most vivid and colorful memories of the Park.” This suggests that the artificial Firefall out-performed the natural waterfalls for which Yosemite had always been famous! The ritual preparation is described: one half cord of bark from fallen red fi r trees is gathered every day in a circle three feet high and the fi re is lit at seven p.m. At nine, the ritual begins. Lights are extinguished and someone from the camp calls, “Hello Glacier!” From far away those at the campfi re hear, “Hello, Camp Curry!” Camp Curry then calls, “Let the fi re fall!” Glacier Point answers, “All right!” and the “stream of glowing embers” flows 1500 feet down the face of the cliff and, as it dies away, leaves “many watchers close to tears.” The Firefall was discontinued the following year, 1968, apparently for two reasons: fi rst, it no longer fit the mood of the park, as the science of ecology and the popular concern with wilderness made the unnaturalness of the spectacle clear; and second, it caused incredible traffic jams because it was so popular, as visitors continued to see it, without irony, as a highlight of their wilderness experience.71 The Firefall

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Figure 4.3 Camp Curry’s Fire Fall. (Yosemite NPS Library RL-17,175.)

The National Park Idea 139 ritual did include nature (even if human-created), nation (the singing of “America”) and community, and reaffi rmed “tradition” (as it was called) as well as creating a heterogeneous moment when fi re falls instead of water and the carnival spirit of chaos reigns as fi reworks explode. Another important ritual that developed in the parks was the viewing of wild animals, with bears being the central attraction. The “Oh, Ranger!” chapter on bears stated that bears “are, without doubt, the greatest single attraction in the parks, at least from the visitor’s point of view. Geysers, waterfalls, mountains, canyons, great trees centuries old, all fade into secondary importance in the visitor’s interest when a bear ambles into sight. . . . The rangers say that in Yosemite National Park a visitor will look at Yosemite Falls, half a mile high, one minute and then turn around and watch a bear one hour.”72 Although this is said with the book’s usual humor, there is no question that the encounter with bears was, indeed, a gripping experience for park visitors. The bears offered a “gap” to the tourist, a liminal moment beyond prescribed boundaries, whether visitors saw the encounter as the opportunity to meet the challenge of the wild and stand face to face with a bear or whether they saw it as a chance to feel an intimate connection with life beyond the human. In either case, the bear, identified as both terrifying and very human opened a portal to the Other. As a way of trying to control this interaction, to close the gap, as well as to please the tourists, bear feeding areas were set up as tourist viewing areas. As early as 1880 tourists gathered at the garbage dump of the Lake Hotel in Yellowstone to watch the bears. Concessionaires constructed a bear platform at Yosemite in 1923, and by 1932 benches to accommodate 1,500 people at the evening program were in place. Similar numbers were reported in the interpretive reports for the late 1930s at the Grizzly Bear Grounds in Yellowstone. The bear-feeding spectacle was encouraged by the concessionaires because of the great appeal it had for visitors. The NPS also wanted to please the visitors and attempted to bring this rather unnatural practice within the National Park Idea by presenting it as an educational opportunity: while the people watched the bears eat, the “ranger naturalist described the life and habits of bears.”73 However, whether tourists watched at the bear feeding platform or handfed bears on the roads, the situation was both “unnatural” and dangerous. Before the 1920s few bears were seen in Yosemite. By 1922 Yosemite Nature Notes stated that “many visitors to the Bear Pits have been well rewarded this year” and in 1924 exclaimed that bears were eating from people’s hands.74 Bear-human incidents also increased and attempts were made to eliminate feeding, which resulted in confl icts not only between Yosemite concessionaires and park naturalists, but also among park managers themselves. What was the appropriate ritual between human and wild life? Were bears there to be entertainment for tourists? Was this a way for humans to be in touch with “real” nature? To be in touch with the “wild” they had become

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Figure 4.4 Ranger Enid Michael dancing with bear, Yosemite, 1920. (NPS Historic Photograph Collection, Harpers Ferry Center 000207.)

disconnected from? Yosemite rangers backed down and in 1937 the sixty bears in Yosemite consumed sixty tons of garbage. Without artificial feeding the area would have supported ten bears.75 In 1940 bear feeding was discontinued76 and forty-five bears were moved away from Yosemite. It was

The National Park Idea 141 not until the end of the 1960s that garbage dumps in Yellowstone were closed, with the result that between 1968 and 1973 189 grizzlies who kept returning for garbage were destroyed.77 Killing predatory animals so tourists would have a large number of nonpredatory animals to observe was another contested issue. If rituals growing out of the National Park Idea were based on an appreciation of nature, what justified this unnatural selection? Park naturalists argued that tourists should be encouraged to have “an appreciation for what the natural world by itself had to offer. The Park Service should be concerned less with entertainment and more with education and preservation.”78 Drawing the line between “entertainment” and “proper” pilgrimage rituals was never simple. Although what forms the animal-human rituals should take continued to be controversial, nonetheless, encounters with the mysterious realm of the animal world were a powerful part of the pilgrimage experience. A third kind of ritual, which was discussed in the previous chapter, was the ritual of the Indian. “Oh Ranger!” describes in stark terms what is usually more hidden. The chapter begins, “‘Indians! There! See them? Real, live Indians!’ It is bred in the bones of the American to thrill at the cry of ‘Indians!’” Even though the tourist “believes the Indian is a species almost extinct,” the author asserts that they are not and gives statistics indicating the growth in the Indian population between 1911 and 1926. This is a fairly straightforward reality check on the “disappearing Indian” fantasy found in the parks, as is the additional charge that “the average Dude or Sagebrusher is not interested in Indians who have become civilized, who wear store clothes, ride in automobiles, and look like any other brand of humans. The Dude wants to see ‘real Indians’ the kind that wear feathers, don war paint, make their clothes and moccasins of skins.” The rest of the chapter is, for its time, a quite remarkable and serious history of native peoples throughout the West. Not surprisingly, there are many inaccuracies—such as the fear of the geysers by the four tribes living in the Yellowstone area— and, indeed the native people he calls to our attention in the parks are the “real” Indians the Dudes want to see: the Blackfeet in Glacier who “still pitch their picturesque tepees near the hotels” and the “real Navaho village” in Mesa Verde. Nonetheless, Albright’s statement that “No picture of the national parks is complete without the story of the Indians that lived in them” is most unusual in park literature.79 Compare, for example, Freeman Tilden’s classic guide, The National Parks, fi rst published in 1951, revised in 1968, and again in 1986 with Paul Schullery. In each edition the index includes an entry for “prehistoric people”—immediately placing Indians as nonexistent in the present. Nearly all the references are incidental, and most of them are in reference to Southwest and Alaskan native peoples, leaving out Plains and California Indians, for example.80 However, even the straightforward debunking of the mythical Indian which is prominent in Albright’s book did not seem to have any effect and, indeed, the Dudes and Sagebrushers did want to see “real Indians” and,

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as with the Firefall and bear feeding, the concessionaires worked to oblige them. One form this took in Yosemite was “Indian Field Days” which began in 1916 with the concessionaire who had originated the bear feeding shows inviting local Indians to a barbecue in the valley; “in return tourists were entertained with dances and were invited to purchase native crafts.”81 Again the NPS attempted to integrate the entertainment into its plan for the Park by emphasizing the educational side. However, in an attempt to draw more visitors, in 1920 the event was turned into a rodeo with a race track. Indian Field Days did succeed in bringing more tourists to the Park, but in 1930 it was discontinued. This decision was recommended by the Yosemite Board of Expert Advisers, a group of three including Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr. (like his father a landscape architect) who convened in 1928. They were from outside the NPS, although endorsed by Mather, and their commission was to see if Yosemite’s “greater values” were being destroyed by all the commercial development that was going on. Preservation of the natural resources of the Park was their primary goal. Indian Field Days, they said, had caused great damage to the meadow where the race track had been constructed— and for none other than a monetary reason. Such a sporting event was not part of the National Park Idea and to associate it with Indians was really “‘quite absurd’ . . . since Yosemite’s Indians historically had never known of such events.”82 On the other hand, the Expert Advisors also recommended

Figure 4.5 Field Day, Mounted and double mounted, 1929. (Yosemite NPS Library 2135.)

The National Park Idea 143 other Indian rituals, more in keeping with the National Park Idea: “a native exhibit ‘done in the aboriginal style, with one or two Indian families resident, during the summer garbed in native dress, carrying on the pursuits of their forebears.’”83 In 1929 a “live” exhibit with Paiute Indians demonstrating native crafts was established behind the museum.84 The presentation of Indians in this educational mode is defi nitely within the understanding of Indians promoted by the Park Service—but here, as in Chapter 3, we see native peoples being treated as “relics,” recalling the values of the Wild West and of primitive America. These are exactly the “real Indians” Albright’s 1929 park goers wished to experience. Only in 1982 did the Park join with a local Indian council and “broke ground with a program that interpreted Miwok and Paiute life during the park’s early years,”85 presenting their actual life ways rather than a primitive stereotype as background or entertainment. The mythology of native peoples was an essential part of the mystery of nature and nation that was being celebrated in the parks, but the inadequacies of the story that was told to the reality of living people revealed the limited ability of the National Park Idea to include those who lived in the parks both before and after the arrival of Euro-Americans. A fi nal ritual that occurred in several parks was the presentation of pageants. Because these “historical” pageants were built on nature and nation, they lay fi rmly within the National Park vision, although the concessionaires were also happy with them insofar as they brought more people into the parks. Garnet Holme, who began the Ramona pageant in California, was Pageant Master for the National Park Service in the late 1920s. Holme’s forte was placing a historical drama in a natural setting and telling the story of the people and the place, in the case of the parks, often Indian people, for example, “Tenaya” in Yosemite. He also produced “Ersa of the Red Trees” in the Mariposa Grove of Yosemite in 1926 and was involved in “Sanctuary” in Yellowstone the same year. “Sanctuary” began with a historical part, going back to the original Euro-American discovery of Yellowstone, but which undid history by bringing together a number of EuroAmericans who were not in the Yellowstone area at the same time. These frontiersmen fi rst must conquer hostile Indians and then hostile nature. The scene concluded with a picture of Uncle Sam, the true victor and overseer of this great discovery. The second part was an allegory in which Uncle Sam was persuaded by nature, wild animals, and trees to declare that the land would be for the Common Good. The geysers dance (in the form of fair maidens) and real bears and birds are brought in to witness the dance. A figure called Sanctuary was awarded the land by the Nation.86 In 1958 Bert Hansen, who produced numerous outdoor pageants in the Rocky Mountains, revived and revised the story of the origin of Yellowstone, creating a pageant that made use of the historical part of the 1926 pageant, but with the focus centrally on the Campfi re and the commitment to democracy that came out of it, as described in Chapter 2. In 1963 park

144 Pilgrimage to the National Parks historian Aubrey Haines raised questions about the historical accuracy of the pageant and requested that it be rewritten. That was the last year the play was performed—“historical accuracy” and the mythic origin story did not mesh. Nonetheless, the “Campfire Story” continues to the present to be a common point of reference in the park.87 In addition to these various rituals that could be related to the National Park Idea, other forms of recreation that could take place anywhere also flourished. At the National Parks Conference in 1912 one of the participants complained that Yosemite had “no attractions save an unkempt nature’s wonderland” and recommended “golf, tennis,” and other such “civilized attractions.”88 Although such a thought was clearly not in line with the National Park Idea, the concessionaires provided just such activities for the tourists. And insofar as they increased the number of visitors, the NPS usually did not object. In 1917 David Steele reported in Going Abroad Overland that the favorite park on his tour was Yosemite. “The joys here of camp life are commingled with every device known to the city habitant. There are swimming pools, dancing pavilions, baseball grounds, tennis courts, bowling alleys, soda fountains, laundries, yes, and ‘movies.’” Although some objected to activities that did not focus on “man in nature,” others, as Steele, enjoyed doing ordinary things in an extraordinary environment. The result was a scarcely controlled heterogeneous mix that celebrated individualism and no doubt provided some community. For some, perhaps, it was “American” community that was experienced and most likely Half Dome and Yosemite Falls played at least some small part in everyone’s visit. Indeed, Steele goes on in his description of “Camp Life in Yosemite Valley” to say, “It is no wonder that is has been called the Cathedral of the Almighty. That half dome, towering in the clouds, is the background to a giant altar; that fragrance of the flowers is incense and the wind is the diapason of a true choir invisible.”89 Steele returns to this theme of the sublimity of nature and its connection to “nature’s God” throughout the book, so it is clear he knew the dominant narrative of the pilgrimage. Nonetheless, it is significant that these “secular” activities, which seem to stand outside the pilgrimage rituals of this sacred space, were an important part of his story. The opening of the Ahwahnee Hotel in 1927 may be seen as a secular reversion to a ritual of an earlier time, providing the luxury and elitism of the early, railroad-sponsored accommodations. However, the exclusivity of this ritual was more striking by its imposition into the democratic atmosphere of the automobile age; and it illustrated clearly what some saw as a contrast between the earlier and later National Park Idea. “In terms of its patron orientation and its carefully landscaped grounds the Ahwahnee was a world within a world, a social enclave reminiscent of an earlier generation of national park use. In no case was this exclusivity better expressed than by the barbed wire-topped chain link fence which separated the hotel grounds from adjacent campgrounds.”90 However, “The irony of unbridled

The National Park Idea 145 luxury in a national park did not faze Mather”91; he saw these rituals of elegance as one more appropriate way the park could serve Americans and Americans could be drawn to visit the park. As we have seen in every case but the secular activities, the NPS attempted to infuse the activities, usually initiated by concessionaires, with the magic of education. This seems to be the underlying heart of the pilgrimage process. In some ways this goes back to Olmstead, Sr. and his fi rm belief that exposure to the power and beauty of nature would “educate” people and make them capable of being good citizens in a democracy. Clearly, the National Park Idea was rooted in the power of the landscape to transform the visitors; and the grandeur of America was always present—it was, indeed, the reason for going to the parks and was the backdrop against which all the other rituals took place, or even the nonrituals, as we see with Steele. Stephen Mather fi rmly believed what qualified a place to be a national park was “monumental scenery.” This is what would be “stabilizing and inspiring influences” and “make for better citizens.”92 Although Mather is widely proclaimed as the initiator of educational programs as central to the park experience, in the late teens he seemed to lack enthusiasm for natural history programs and guides; and perhaps this was because he thought, in the tradition of the sublime, that nature—the monumental scenery—was all the teacher that was needed.93 The move into the ritual of education began with an essay in Nature by Joseph Grinnell and Tracy Storer titled “Animal Life as an Asset of National Parks.” Grinnell argued for the value of recreation, but, rejecting much of what passed for recreation in the parks, he said what was needed was restoring the balance of mind and body which urban life had unbalanced. This restoration would come by observing “the great insentient forces of nature . . . the intimate inter-relations of plants and animals.” To enable this to happen, the natural conditions in national parks had to be preserved. The article also argued for the value of the parks as scientific resources and for him this was intimately connected to education. He called for a trained naturalist on the staff of each national park who would make education available to the tourists, as well as advising on management of the park’s resources, especially animals.94 However, even though a scientist, Joseph Grinnell’s dedication to preservation still reflected mythic America. In this article Grinnell made the statement that became—and still is—a mantra of the NPS pilgrimage: “Herein lies the feature of supreme value in national parks: they furnish samples of the earth as it was before the advent of the white man.”95 Grinnell’s influence pointed to a future which would require much closer associations with science and would gradually move the park philosophy and experience away from the focus on nationalism and the See America First mentality that had dominated the parks for fifty years to a new focus on nature and ecology. The pilgrimage experience came to focus on nature more than nation. Science and nature religion both opened gaps that

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enabled a new national park story to emerge. This is not to say that the earlier emphases disappear. The sublime, God’s care for American nature and nation, and the rituals associated with them continue. Nor is it to say that science and spirituality were not present earlier. But our focus will shift to the way these new emphases developed into the contemporary period.

Part III

Wilderness and Beyond

Introduction to Part III Competing Constructions of Wilderness

“An Act to Establish a National Wilderness Preservation System for the Permanent Good of the Whole People, and for Other Purposes,” also known as the “Wilderness Act,” was passed by Congress in 1964. One year earlier the Leopold and Robbins reports had been issued by the Park Service, both related to scientific management of the parks. These events signaled a new chapter in the story of nature in American culture, reflecting changes at both the official and popular levels in the symbolic power of wilderness, the role of human beings in nature, and, given these understandings, the meaning of preservation and the federal government’s role in it. The bill and reports were a culmination of processes that had begun earlier in the century and included as key players those who had been promoting wilderness as something different from the National Park Idea and scientists both within and outside the Park Service who believed science should be used as a tool in park management. Although not always in agreement, together they offered a critique of the National Park Service as the preserver of America’s sacred lands. At this same time the Park Service was engaged in Mission 66—a development project that was initiated in 1956 under Director Conrad Wirth with the intention of improving the deteriorating physical plants of the parks and preparing them for greatly expanded numbers of visitors by 1966. Key to Mission 66 was the focus on tourism and development. The project saw itself in the tradition of Mather and Albright and was an attempt to revitalize the National Park Idea for a new era. Although this approach suited the postwar milieu well, as it had following World War I, it clashed sharply with the discourse developing around preservation of wilderness and concern for the environment that was given impetus by the Wilderness Act and the Robbins and Leopold reports. The Wilderness Act set forth a process for determining which federal lands would be designated as wilderness and included parts of Forest Service as well as Park Service lands. Because an outside agency would be monitoring the NPS, the Act was originally resisted by the Park Service under the leadership of Director Wirth. The irony that became apparent through the process leading to the passage of the bill was that the NPS, which had from

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its inception championed the preservation of public lands, was now in the position of being seen as lagging behind the new understandings and procedures that were growing out of what was broadly called the environmental movement. Part of this movement labeled itself the wilderness movement and they, in turn, came to be seen by more scientifically-oriented activists as being resistant to utilizing scientific tools in land preservation—a resistance the Park Service shared. The Leopold and Robbins reports were unusual in that the Park Service invited scientists outside the NPS to investigate management issues within the parks, but the reports received little implementation by the NPS. The tensions between the NPS, wilderness preservation activists, and scientists (and some people occupied all three categories) led to new and shifting alliances, to new articulations of “nature,” and to new possibilities and contestations for who would be the true protectors of America’s sacred lands. The issues, and the positions taken on them, have taken on ever greater levels of complexity in the twenty-fi rst century. Each of these groups had their own variations on the discourse of nature and national parks. Through their interactions changes in the discourse and practice of the national parks occurred. This section examines how through this process the official narrative that had developed under Mather and Albright was contested and significantly altered as both environmental and wilderness discourses became embodied in the space and experience of the national parks. Because they were not fully incorporated into the official story, persisting contradictions and heterogeneous voices and enactments occurred. As we have seen, John Bodnar’s Remaking America is a useful tool for exploring these confl icting voices. Official discourse perpetuates tradition, while vernacular discourse reveals existential concerns. This is similar to the “gap” discussed earlier, the possibility of introducing a new image or idea that disrupts the established discourse and allows new visions and values to be imagined. As we use this model to examine the changing narratives related to the national parks the difficulties of identifying what is official and what vernacular complicates the model, demonstrating the need to attend to the heterogeneity and continuing alterations in both the language used and the values conveyed and enacted. The different narratives in the national parks are more richly understood by approaching them not as monolithic or hegemonic but heterogeneous. For example, wilderness discourse, which had persisted as a marginal voice through the fi rst half of the century became, with the Wilderness Act, part of official discourse, even though it was in some ways at odds with the official discourse of the Park Service. Even though official, it expressed the values of a significant segment of the populace, while yet another vernacular voice (self-identified in the late 1980s as the “wise use movement”1) strongly objected to restrictions imposed on land use by the new Act. The 1960s were a time of contestation in American culture when official, authoritative discourse was called into question by vernacular discourses

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on many fronts; and the promotion of nature as an alternative to what some saw as the empty forms of mainstream American culture was one of the most important of these. In some ways this mirrored the emphasis on nature of the antimodern movement of the turn of the century (see Introduction to Part II). As in the earlier period, we can apply the term antimodern to the wilderness movement insofar as its narrative was a protest against urbanization and industrialization (and more recently the world of technology), with the healing balm of the great outdoors as antidote. Stephen Fox labeled the conservation movement (and he included the wilderness movement) “the most durable expression of antimodernism . . . a religious protest against modernity.”2 However, this new version of antimodernism was shaped by the new scientific discourse about environmental issues that became widespread in the culture, particularly with the publication of Rachel Carson’s “vernacular” Silent Spring in 1962, which was fi rst serialized in The New Yorker and became a best seller. Thus, wilderness discourse—vernacular in usually being found outside official circles—and scientific discourse— usually seen as authoritative—met, creating an uneasy alliance. Another point of contestation and challenge to official discourse during this period came from those who rejected the authoritative voice of mainstream American religions, claiming the authority of their personal spirituality. The avenues explored in this smorgasbord feast were many,3 but a crucial element in many of them was nature as the source of human wholeness and/or the transcendent.4 Although this approach sometimes rejected the story of American nature, looking more to the universal (Deep Ecology, for example), very often it blended seamlessly with the narrative of the nation’s “unique experience with nature,”5 which was told in Roderick Nash’s 1967 book Wilderness and the American Mind and which spoke powerfully to the popular “American mind” which it described.6 In this new spirituality the voices of wilderness and science sometimes came together, combining nature as an emblem for an authentic life outside of consumer America with environmental science. Sometimes the result was a narrative of ecospirituality that included a place for science, as Bron Taylor examines in Deep Green Religion,7 combining official and vernacular discourses; and sometimes a purely vernacular narrative emerged in which, having learned from science the effects of human actions on the environment, saw human intrusions into nature, including those of science, as desecration. The power of the mythic narrative that developed in this in-between space is seen in its embeddedness in the official discourses of the Wilderness Act and the Leopold (and to a lesser degree) the Robbins reports, confi rming the power this narrative had in American culture. The Leopold and Robbins reports, which will be discussed in Chapter 5, were solicited by the NPS and affi rmed by many within it, even as they challenged the official discourse of the park tradition. The reports emphasized their fi nding that nature in the national parks was not undamaged by human use, in

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spite of the Park Service’s intention to preserve—and conviction that it was preserving—nature unimpaired. Further, science was asserted to be the necessary tool to remedy the damage and avoid it in the future, in order to enable the national parks to provide enjoyment for future generations. The wilderness movement, which will be the focus of Chapter 6, centered on the mythic place identified by the scientists—nature without human impact, reaffi rming the power of pristine nature to restore human beings to the wholeness they had lost through mistreatment of nature. However, some rejected scientific manipulation of the land, as well as the possibility that the National Park Idea, so embedded in tourism and development, could ever preserve wilderness. Chapter 7 will examine developments that have required rethinking the very idea of the boundaries that set a national park apart. With an increased acceptance of the role of science in park management, the emergence of the ecosystem model called into question the long-standing idea of national parks as “islands” entirely separated from the developed lands surrounding them. The story of the rise of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem as a viable model for managing park lands is one example of this. The new Alaskan parks also defied traditional ideas of what was appropriate within the boundaries of a national park by incorporating subsistence activities into the parks and made possible the idea of “inhabited wilderness.” A third area of boundary change that has resulted in changes to the traditional narrative of the parks involves, as does inhabited wilderness, a re-imagining of the relationship between nature and culture. This section will explore these various narratives, looking for places where vernacular discourses disrupt the official discourse, but acknowledging that the distinction between them is not always clear. What we will see is a gradual change in official discourse as it interacts—and conflicts—with vernacular discourses and through this interaction an alteration of the official discourse occurs. With this altered discourse, the forms of pilgrimage also change with a new emphasis on the interconnectedness of humans and nature and the parks as places where that spiritual connection could be experienced. In addition to changes in the official discourse of the NPS, there is also the development of a narrative that brings science and spirituality together, combining the official and vernacular.

5

Mythic and Scientific America

Under Mather and Albright the National Park Service developed a tradition, often called the National Park Idea, which became equated with the parks themselves. As John Bodnar applies his models of official and vernacular discourse to the national parks at this time, he argues that the postwar emphasis on national unity and greatness, which was expressed through the official discourse of this tradition, left little room for the imaginative possibilities of the vernacular. The parks became he says, and we have seen, centers of the nation. He points to the aggressive patriotism post-World War I, followed in the 1930s by the highly nationalistic New Deal—in which the national parks participated through CCC projects. He also notes the past tradition of the parks as symbols of American greatness as contributing factors to this nation-centered discourse.1 There is an attempt to repeat this following World War II—a time when Americans flocked to the parks in ever greater numbers and the Park Service had few resources to deal with them. “Mission 66” was Director Conrad Wirth’s plan to win support from the government for the parks; and, within the context of the Cold War, Wirth asserted the patriotic importance of the parks for American citizens and the necessity of developing them into venues that adequately reflected the pride of Americans. The hope was that together these would revitalize the tradition established by Mather and Albright. Following closely on Mission 66, the reports of two committees, chaired by Starker Leopold and William Robbins, would lead the parks in new directions.

“LABORATORY OUT-OF-DOORS” The impetus for changes in the national park narrative from within came from two park stalwarts: science and education. Although at the time of the establishment of the NPS Joseph Grinnell, author of “Animal Life as an Asset of National Parks,” and C.M. Goethe had to coax Mather and Albright to hire qualified scientists as resident park naturalists, after 1920 the official discourse promoted education as central to the pleasure of the

154 Pilgrimage to the National Parks park experience and parks as “laboratories out-of-doors.”2 Not only did Mather establish an education division, but when Albright became Director in 1929 he added a wildlife division—so both education and science, and the close links between them, were affirmed as part of the MatherAlbright tradition. They had become convinced that education in natural history would increase the pleasure of the park experience for visitors,

Figure 5.1 Dr. Harold C. Bryant conducting nature walk in Yosemite Valley, 1920. (NPS Historic Photograph Collection, Harpers Ferry Center 000103.)

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which would in turn increase the number of visitors, resulting in more governmental support for the national parks. George Wright, a young scientist from Berkeley, was largely responsible for convincing Albright to establish the wildlife division. In 1929 he began a survey, along with Joseph Dixon and Ben Thompson, of the wildlife in the national parks, which resulted in the “Preliminary Survey of the Fauna of the National Parks” (Fauna I) in 1933. Wright saw his role as very much in line with the tradition of the National Park Idea even as he introduced new emphases into it. The NPS Origin Act had said the parks were to “conserve the scenery and the natural and historic objects and the wild life therein”—and the greatest emphasis had been placed on the scenery. As Grinnell, Wright moved the central focus of what national parks had to offer from scenic wonders to the wildlife and the biological systems of the parks. Again as Grinnell, Wright kept the links to mythic America, focusing on “primitive America” as the point of meaning and value to be preserved. This mythic moment for him is not Grinnell’s “before the advent of the white man”—evoking the image of a primeval, unpeopled landscape fi lled with wildlife—but “characteristic portions of our country as it was seen by Boone . . . and Lewis and Clark.” We are the explorers, the fi rst to see this land—unpeopled until that moment—and being unpeopled, part of the joy of it is its existence apart from human intervention. In his vision the explorers were presented not as conquerors but as enjoying an intimate relationship with the wildlife as they shared their biotic realm and relied on them for survival. This harmonious relationship is a crucial part of American identity, he said, seen, for example, in the animals that appear on U.S. coins and flags. “Emblematically, we live among those birds and animals to-day [sic].” Thus, he argued, even more important than the scenery is the experience of observing animals in their wild settings, “in which even the observers feel themselves a part.”3 Wright’s report, then, articulated a new understanding of the national park experience. One way of putting it is a move from awe before the scenic wonders of God’s American creation to the experience of other livings things in the wild and feeling part of their living space. The experience is at once mythic American and existential, as the past heritage and the present moment of personal experience of natural forces come together. This is the meaning of pilgrimage to the national parks for him, with the experience in nature being augmented by the knowledge imparted by the park naturalist. Although Fauna I does not use the language of God or inspiration, meaning and value are to be found in the experience of other life forms and the understanding that contemporary humans, as the explorers, share their environment without disturbing it. However, this approach uncovered a problem. Unlike the scenic wonders, often geological features that could either endure the passage of humans or be roped off against them, both the animal life of the park and the plant life that was necessary to their survival were easily disrupted by the onslaught of

156 Pilgrimage to the National Parks humans. Protection in the traditional sense (usually prohibiting hunting and protecting from wildfires and, until 1931, predators) was no longer enough. Although the traditional discourse of scenic wonders could fairly easily accommodate amazing wildlife, the scientific information about the effects of both visitors and the Park Service on the wildlife and the resulting changes the Service would have to make if preservation of primitive America were to continue, necessarily disrupted the traditional understandings of how the parks functioned. Wright did not intend to exclude visitors, as he describes the preservation of primitive America to be for “the recreation-seeking public and scientists of to-day, and their descendants.”4 But to say that the protection the Park Service was providing would not enable the parks to remain unimpaired clearly challenged the fundamental approach of the Service. About the time Wright was conducting his survey, which would reveal disruptions of wildlife in every park, Albright, then Superintendent of Yellowstone, published an article in The Saturday Evening Post titled “The Everlasting Wilderness,” which affirmed a road building program to make the parks more accessible, while asserting that almost all of the land in the parks remained “everlasting wilderness” which would not be changed by the addition of well-planned roads or the visitors they would bring.5 The message of the article was that the Park Service knew its job and could do it well. The necessity of scientific research in the management of the parks simply was not part of the national park tradition, nor would it be for many years. Because Wright understood himself to be part of the national park tradition and presented biological science as a way of carrying out the Service’s mandate to preserve the parks, he was able to win over Albright when he became Director of the NPS; and the wildlife division thrived in the early 1930s. However, with Wright’s untimely death in 1936 and the emphasis on development rather than preservation encouraged by the CCC programs in the parks, the wildlife issues Wright had raised were soon forgotten and it was not until the 1960s, in the era of the Wilderness Act, that the voice for scientific research once again became important.6 Even when the concerns of scientists were heard, the complexity of natural processes would not only prove to be difficult for the national park tradition to incorporate, it would also cause problems for the scientists— along with the environmentalists and wilderness lovers. The attempt to incorporate science into the mythic story of America and to sort out the meaning and values of humans’ relation to nature would also prove complex and divisive—as would the attempt to separate science from meaning and values. As noted previously, Wright set his mythic story in the time of the explorers, who not only saw primitive America, but were able to experience it and live within it, apparently without destroying it. This is presented as a time when nature and humans were not separate—perhaps because there was no “civilization.” What is powerful about this setting lies in the natural processes taking place without human interference. It was this which Wright wanted to preserve or restore in the national parks. And here

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we have his dilemma. In order to solve the problems that have resulted from the influence of humans and to return to the “dynamic processes” in effect at the time of the explorers, human manipulation is essential. Contained in this Catch-22 are the issues that occupied biological scientists and wilderness advocates at the time of the Wilderness Act and even up to the present. Should humans avoid all manipulation of the natural environment? Wright thinks not. He wants “biological engineers” to restore species that have disappeared. This is desirable not only to bring back that species, “but because it will fi ll once more the niche that was deserted, and so help to restore the life of the park to its primitive dynamic balance”7—a fi ne combination of an ecological perspective and the myth of America. But the question arises, how do we know what was there then? And one might also ask, why is this moment the “primitive” that should be reconstructed? Although some who followed Wright assumed it could not be reconstructed,8 Wright tried through interviews with pioneers and Indians who saw the areas before they became national parks; archeological research; and examination of paintings and depictions of wildlife in early writings.9 Two examples of how his scientific observations were shaped by his cultural and mythic perspective are, fi rst, he assumes that the native peoples did not manipulate or influence their landscape. They are more like the fauna than like the white man, and Wright includes a photo of “Maria, the last of the Yosemites” who is one of his sources and she takes her place among the fauna pictured in the report. Second, Runte notes how Wright criticized the clearing of areas around the great sequoias—“in a national park we are both obligated and should desire to present Sequoias exactly as found in nature.” Unfortunately, Wright was seeing as “natural” what was natural to him—apparently not aware of how the suppression of wildfi res had altered the “natural” landscape.10 As to the question of why the primitive is equated to this moment—as if nature remained unchanged until the coming of the European—Wright acknowledged that it was a somewhat arbitrary choice, that nature is always in flux so there is “no one wild-life picture which can be called the original one.” Although Wright does not explain whether or not he means to preserve primitive America for all time, that is, to manage the park so succession does not occur, he does say of beaver that the animal should not be managed so as to restrict the cyclical process of beaver activity, which includes destroying habitat and moving on until the habitat recovers: the beaver is “not an interesting animal which builds houses and dams in its picturesque lake. . . . If there is to be any permanent value in our parks, they must be allowed to run their orderly succession of change which produces the marvelous variety of life.”11 We will find others who, contrarily, assert the parks should remain as a museum, enshrining that primitive moment in time. In spite of his recognition of the necessity of restoration, for Wright the fi nal goal was “That every species shall be left to carry on its struggle for

158 Pilgrimage to the National Parks existence unaided, as being to its greatest ultimate good, unless there is real cause to believe that it will perish if unassisted.” Thus nature would function without human interference—since this is the ideal of the time of origin. And very often it is this statement by Wright that was referred to by those in the Park Service who wanted to maintain the “protection” status quo, assuming the animals would carry on very well on their own. But Wright was quite clear that “noninterference” was not sufficient. His fi rst reason was that early adverse human influences would not disappear even when their cause had been eradicated. Park policy might assume, though, that in time this mitigation would be taken care of and then “protection” would suffice.12 His other two reasons, however, are endemic to the reality of a national park and seem to make his goal an ideal that could never be realized (although he does not seem to acknowledge this). The fi rst is, he said, that parks are not independent biological units, but artificial units with artificial boundaries, which we can correct to some extent (by enlarging to provide winter range, e.g.), but which will always remain artificial. Second, because humans are now part of the parks, they must “be considered an integral part of those microcosms” and thus “the perpetuation of natural conditions will have to be forever reconciled with the presence of large numbers of people on the scene, a seeming anomaly.”13 Thus, the ideal of no human intervention, as if the park were as it was when the explorers fi rst saw it (minus the native peoples, of course), is impossible to realize. People in large numbers are now a part of the environment. Yet the ideal remains as the goal because it fits the story of mythic, primeval America. The pilgrimage that fits this understanding is to reenact the origin story of the new world as encountered by the explorers and to experience there the wildlife with which we share the environment.

EMERGENCE OF ALTERNATIVE NARRATIVES The official discourse of the NPS was able to incorporate education and science, with the former put into action as education was promoted as central to the visitors’ enjoyment of the parks. Scientific research was included in the discourse as Albright embraced science’s contribution to the enjoyment of the national parks. “Being equipped by nature with the most complete and magnificent laboratories imaginable, it was inevitable that scientific research should become an important and popular activity of the NPS.” He even suggested this was implicitly a part of the original mandate for the Service—or at least that the aims of science were congruent with the aims of the NPS. As he said, “the underlying motive in establishing each park for the benefit of the people was to preserve something precious from a special standpoint which, when analyzed, proved to be based upon some natural phenomenon or other object of interest to scientists or historians.” In this

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same 1933 article published in the Scientific Monthly he goes a step further—and closer to Wright—as he says research is necessary in the parks not only so that education can be more interesting, but also for the “actual protection of the natural features of the parks.” Finally, he affi rms Wright’s call for the NPS to establish a management plan for wildife.14 These ideas found their place “on the ground” as Albright established and supported both the education and wildlife divisions. Nonetheless, although references to education and science were incorporated in the official discourse, for the most part they were put in the service of the traditional affi rmation of scenic preservation and recreational tourism. By incorporating science and education into the official narrative without changing the traditional goals, the alternative possibilities they presented were silenced. The thrust of the Park Service message was to reinforce a tradition of managing the parks as protected scenic havens which would be preserved by traditional protection without need of biological sciences. This is not to say that Wright’s influence meant nothing. Indeed there were changes in the understanding and management of parks that reflected the influence of research biologists in this period. For example, in 1931 Director Albright established a new policy on “predatory mammals”: “The NPS believes that predatory animals have a real place in nature, and that all animal life should be kept inviolate within the parks.” If it were determined a population was being threatened, then predator control would be allowed, but it was no longer automatic. He went on to say, “It is the duty of the National Park Service to maintain examples of the various interesting North American mammals under natural conditions for the pleasure and education of the visitors and for the purpose of scientific study.”15 This change was, no doubt, related to Wright’s research and he would indeed agree, though fi nding the wording strange, that predators have a “real place in nature” and that they are “interesting.” The change in policy may also have been related to his research as it showed the problems an overabundance of elk were causing to the range now that predators were largely gone. The animal that seemed by defi nition to be placed outside this safe haven was the coyote. Not only does Albright mention them here as an exception to those “inviolate,” but continues to campaign against them after leaving the Directorship, arguing against a study begun in 1937 on the Ecology of the Coyote in the Yellowstone by one of the Park’s top biologists, Adolph Murie, that advocated for coyote protection, asserting their negligible impact was worth their contribution to preserving the biotic mosaic of each park. New Director Cammerer sided with the biologists in 1939, moving management practices in a new direction.16 Another example of a significant change in attitude is seen with the creation of Everglades National Park, which was approved in 1934, although not dedicated until 1947 because of difficulties acquiring the land. Everglades lacked the traditional magnificent mountain scenery that had been interpreted to be the fundamental requirement for a national park. This

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park had to be argued for on the basis of wildlife, particularly birds, and the necessity of preserving their habitat as wilderness. Indeed, that it be designated as a “wilderness preserve” was included in the enabling act— the fi rst time this language had explicitly been used. The Act was also revolutionary in putting preservation as the top priority: “no development of the park to provide access to visitors must ‘interfere with the preservation intact of the unique flora and fauna and the essential primitive conditions.’” This is indeed subversive of the centrality in traditional discourse of the “enjoyment of the people.”17 Changes in the rituals of park visitors that occurred during this period, driven at least in part by the influence of wildlife biology, included the cessation of the bear feeding shows in 1943 under Director Drury. Drury referred to Wright’s report as justification for this action—that each species would “carry on its struggle for existence unaided.” Other considerations were the continuing attacks on humans and the necessity of killing “troublemaker” bears. Drury thought the bear shows did not fit the atmosphere of the national park where they should be viewed, just as Wright said, in their natural environment. Once again Albright rose up to protest. In his traditional view of the National Park Idea, the pleasure visitors had in viewing the bear shows—and they were tremendously popular—should not be taken away.18 Although there were, then, some policy changes that undermined the traditional story of the national parks, for the most part that discourse prevailed and the attention to wildlife biology waned. Further, the tradition of Mather and Albright that affi rmed development blossomed after the lull in visitors during World War II.

THE CULMINATION OF THE MATHER—ALBRIGHT TRADITION Conrad Wirth, Director of the NPS 1951–1964 and Freeman Tilden, known as the “Father of Interpretation,” confi rmed the traditional vision of Mather and Albright, perhaps for the last time before the environmental movement in its scientific and spiritual forms became a part of the vernacular discourse that insisted on having its voice heard. Wirth’s development project Mission 66 provided the setting for Tilden’s approach to interpretation, although Tilden remained in some ways truer to the educational and scientific overtures of the1920s and1930s, focusing on the parks as pilgrimage sites as well as establishing a limited, but essential, place for science. Wirth found himself as director of a park system whose facilities had received little money since the 1930s and thus little maintenance. At the same time, park attendance, down during the war, had grown tremendously. The facilities and service were so bad that Bernard DeVoto wrote an article for Harpers Magazine in 1953 titled, “Let’s Close the National Parks” that brought to popular attention the problems in the parks. Wirth’s

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response was his “Mission 66” plan for developing the parks over the following ten years. Selling it to President Eisenhower and later the Congress, Wirth effectively used the official discourse of the NPS as begun with Mather and Albright, combining both economic and American values. “To put the national parks in shape,” he said, is an investment in the physical, mental, and spiritual well-being of Americans as individuals. It is a gainful investment contributing substantially to the national economy. . . . It is an investment in good citizenship. Where else do so many Americans under the most pleasant circumstances come face to face with their Government? . . . Where else but in the great out-of-doors as God made it can we better recapture the spirit and something of the qualities of the pioneers? Pride in their Government, love of the land, and faith in the American Tradition—these are the real products of our national parks.19 This is the National Park Idea at its finest—spiritual health and God, individualism and good citizenship, and contribution to the economy. Interpretation materials developed in Yellowstone National Park to explain and promote Mission 66 continued these emphases. For example, they affirmed the preservation approach in national parks in contrast to the development mentality of the nation: “It has been said, ‘Man does not live by bread alone.’ Yellowstone’s natural resources minister to more than man’s physical needs. They minister to his mind and spirit. Yellowstone has been and will continue to be preserved for what it is, not for what it will produce.” At the same time, seemingly returning to the national development mentality, they noted, “Most important of all, man’s desire to partake of Yellowstone’s inspirational, recreational, and spiritual values has generated a tourist economy which exceeds $150,000,000 in commercial exchange annually.”20 There is no question that Mission 66 was about development. To increase the comfort level of park visitors and to provide them with an enriching experience, Wirth’s focus was on developing visitor facilities including Visitor Centers, a new model that would provide, as he said in his 1960 Annual Report, for “visitor comfort, information, interpretation as well as inspiration.”21 Large amphitheaters—with backrests for every seat—were also important for these goals. A landscape architect himself, landscape architects were leaders in the project. Rustic architecture gave way to more cost efficient, modern buildings and existing roads were improved for visitor comfort and the road system expanded to make more areas accessible. 22 Two other priorities of Mission 66 were to buy out inholdings and to move facilities outside the parks whenever possible, which were moves toward less development in the parks. 23 What all these items shared in common was the goal of increasing visitor satisfaction. Although development of physical facilities was the focus of Mission 66, Wirth did assert the necessity of scientific research: “‘guess-work is not

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good enough for America’s national heritage’ and ‘exact knowledge and understanding based on sound scientific . . . research is essential.’” However, there was scarcely any money appropriated for biological research with Mission 66 and clearly science was not at the forefront of the agenda. Sellars quotes Wirth commenting to Horace Albright in November 1956, “‘Sometimes I fi nd, Horace, and I am sure you will agree with this, that you can get too scientific on these things and cause a lot of harm.’ . . . Albright displayed attitudes similar to Wirth’s when he told a 1958 gathering of the National Parks Advisory Board that ‘there should not be too much emphasis laid on biology.’”24 It seems there was some basic tension between the traditional understanding of national parks and the work of biologists. Perhaps part of it is that the people’s representative of the Service, the ranger (as we saw in Chapter 4 with Albright’s “Oh, Ranger!”) was a leader who could do everything—from fighting fi res to explaining the habits of bears or the work of a glacier. Specialists were not needed and indeed seemed inimical to the ranger as the tender of the parks and the informer and caretaker of visitors. Also, the assumption was that the traditional ways of protecting the parks, as put in place by Mather and Albright, were all that were needed to preserve them unimpaired. Although science took a backseat, the new visitor centers required attention to education. One of the guidelines for Mission 66 was “An adequate information and interpretive service is essential to proper park experience . . . to help the park visitor enjoy the area, and to appreciate and understand it.”25 Under Freeman Tilden education (now called interpretation) was central, and he incorporated the language of science into the discourse as well, stressing its importance as a necessary auxiliary to interpretation. Science provided the information—the facts—out of which interpretation wove its web of meaning. His highly popular 1951 National Parks guidebook, 26 began by setting his readers—visitors, and perhaps Congressmen as well—in the midst of an ongoing squabble between those who wanted more science and those who thought it did not fit in the parks. “The value of the National Parks to the scientist, the student, and the researcher is with some, perhaps not with many, a touchy subject.” He assures his readers that scientists and the “average person” both work well in the freedom that the parks allow. Not only did he stand up for the scientist, he also demonstrated the value of scientific concepts in providing visitors an entry into the park experience. He introduced his readers to the biological understanding of “life community” through the term “ecology,” which, he acknowledged, was an unfamiliar word that referred to “the study of animal and plant life in their home—in their environment—over long periods; and therefore their relations with other forms of life which share that home. These make a community.”27 This understanding is in line with Fauna I as it had been incorporated into the Park Service tradition in interpretation, if not in management practices; and also in keeping with it he cautions that although “letting nature

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take its course” is the ideal, it must remain only an ideal as long as humans are in or even at the fringes of the parks. Therefore, some “interference” is necessary and we never know if it is going to work. But the goal is to “preserve, in a condition as unaltered as is humanly possible, the wilderness that greeted the eyes of the fi rst white men who challenged and conquered it.” He goes beyond the standard narrative as he adds that the purpose is also to “keep intact in the wilderness areas all the historic and prehistoric evidences of occupation by our predecessors”—a seldom heard reminder that other humans were living in the land of the parks both before and after the coming of the white man. 28 Because of the success of the guide book, and because his views on interpretation complemented Mission 66’s emphasis on visitor centers, Tilden wrote a handbook for interpreters, published in 1957. Tilden clearly put interpretation at the heart of the pilgrimage experience. The interpreter made the meaning of this place come alive for visitors and took on the role of the spiritual leader who opened the initiate to the mysteries of nature. This was not, he specified, “education.” Those who value education look to specialists who deal in facts. The true interpreter takes the facts, and through interpreting them connects to the experience of the visitors and “provokes” them to see beyond the facts. The interpreter would “appeal to the emotions, to the hunger for deeper understanding, to the religious spirit of the individual, no less than to the love of beautiful and wonderful objects, or the restoration of physical well being.”29 Nature is the teacher who can accomplish this. “And what the interpreters of the NPS really do is to arrange an introduction to the schoolma’am [nature] and lead visitors to the place where class is in session.” One of the crucial lessons is on natural beauty, but even for the interpreters that remains shrouded in mystery. “We can only shadowly comprehend, and perhaps the mystery will always tantalize us. But fortunately for our spiritual welfare we live with the fact . . . that in the presence of unsullied, unexploited ‘raw’ nature, we are lifted to a height beyond ourselves.”30 Preservation of this beauty is the main business of the national parks and this is accomplished simply by using the parks “rightly”—by the visitor studying “the course material of our natural and historic origins” and, hopefully taking the lessons the national parks teach back home. The pilgrimage process for Tilden draws visitors into the mysteries of nature and nation, with the guidance of the interpreter, and sends them home both restored and with an abiding interest in nature.31 Conrad Wirth approved of the approach and power of Tilden’s presentation of interpretation and in his introduction to the National Geographic’s park guide America’s Wonderlands (1959) refers to Tilden as “One of the best writers on the park.” But although Mission 66 affirmed the importance of interpretation, the contrast between its approach and that of Tilden is significant. Wirth, for example, describes interpretive facilities in a way quite foreign to Tilden: “We are the country’s largest manufacturer

164 Pilgrimage to the National Parks of museum exhibits; we use the product in visitor centers, formerly called museums.”32 America’s Wonderlands as a guidebook also presents an interesting contrast to Tilden’s National Parks. The former begins with Wirth’s Introduction, which presents his personal experiences of the parks and a brief history of the beginnings (the campfi re story) and development of the parks, with a focus on Mission 66. There is an effort to welcome people to the parks and to prepare them for their visit, with the emphasis on enjoying it however you want: “The parks mean different things to different people.”33 The holdings of the National Park System are grouped geographically, putting all the sites in one region together to make it easy to see which sites could be visited on the same trip. “Scenic and archeological park areas” are discussed, excluding historic sites, but including not only national parks and monuments, but also representative national recreation areas, seashores, and parkways, without attention to the fact that these are all managed differently and for different purposes. Tilden’s book on the other hand, begins with a section intended to prepare visitors for the experience they are going to encounter in the parks and the meaning of the national park experience. This includes, as seen earlier, an understanding of the role of science in the parks. The fi rst section, which includes National Parks and Monuments, is organized around themes related to geological and biological characteristics of the parks, for example, “Green Sanctuaries,” “Forge of Vulcan,” and “The Ice Moves Down.” He acknowledges the divisions are rather arbitrary, but his intention is to get at the essence of what one discovers in each park and to deepen this meaning through mythological associations. We see here his interesting inclusion of both the particularities of science and the universal archetypes he believed were at the heart of the spiritual experience of the parks. The 1968 edition adds, among other things, a historical section beginning with Americans before Columbus and moving into contemporary America. These two sections—one geological and biological and one historical—present two stories of America and give us two ways of entering into the meanings of the parks and American nature and history. The pictures in the two books are also interestingly different. In the 1968 edition of Tilden’s guide the author says he decides whether to include a picture by asking, “Does this picture somehow contrive to convey something of the spirit, the essence of the area?”34 Almost every picture in Tilden’s book, as well as its caption, invites the viewer to share his understanding of the “deeper meaning” of the park. (An exception, in Recreation Areas, is a picture of two young women waterskiing; but a fisherman and a sailboat in that section evoke the quietness of communing with nature; and the picture for Glen Canyon Recreation Area is without people). America’s Wonderlands functions in both its text and pictures as an advertisement for the parks, particularly related to Mission 66, and includes not only the kind of pictures Tilden does, evoking wilderness and the inspiration of being in nature, but also pictures of people playing, whether in a powerboat, feeding

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bears (with the text saying how dangerous it is), teens romping in the sand dunes, or crowds of people at a lake. The intentions of the two books are clearly different and each offers the reader a different view of what the experience of pilgrimage should be. There are few references to interpretation or science in Wonderlands and the strongest impression of the parks is as “America’s Playgrounds.” Tilden’s focus is inviting the tourist through interpretation into the mysteries of what he saw as the archetypal meanings of the parks.

CHANGE AND TRADITION IN THE PARKS This was the setting in the 1960s, when challenges to traditional discourse and management policies arose from both within and outside the Park Service. In 1963 two external reports on the Park Service came out—one on wildlife management, the Leopold Report, and one on research in the parks, the Robbins Report. These reports, as well as the Wilderness Act which was passed in 1964, disrupted the stability and focus on development of the Wirth era and caused revaluation of the traditional understanding of park management and visitor experience and the introduction of alternative voices from both scientific and humanistic spheres. The understandings of nature and humans’ place in it expressed in these two reports and the Wilderness Act were not identical—indeed were at odds in some ways—but they all contrasted with the traditional discourse of the NPS and were all the result of a change in culture that was being made manifest in the 1960s. The Leopold and Robbins reports, named for the chairs of the Advisory committees appointed by Secretary of Interior Udall, occurred at the same time as Mission 66 and its emphasis on development, but their larger context goes back to the 1930s and George Wright ‘s Fauna I (although the Leopold Report makes no reference to it). Although the knowledge of ecological systems had developed tremendously in the three decades between them, the fundamentals of Wright’s findings are repeated to a great extent in these reports. As Fauna I, they are concerned with moving the Park Service toward preservation through scientific research and, for the Leopold Report, as at Wright’s time, the ungulate problem was a precipitating factor. The NPS came under fi re in 1961 when an attempt was made to deal with the excessive number of elk in Yellowstone National Park that, it was thought, were destroying the range, by killing 4,300 elk in six weeks. 35 There was a public uproar. Hunters who thought they should have been let into the park to cull the elk protested. Conservationists protested the lack of scientific management that had created the problem. Still others protested the destruction of the animals that were a favorite sight in the parks. That same year Howard Stagner prepared a report for internal use, “Get the Facts, and Put Them to Use,” which was explicitly critical of the ineffectiveness of the Park Service science program. 36 In

166 Pilgrimage to the National Parks response to these several events, Secretary of Interior Udall called for two external committees to review Park Service policies—an unusual process that was sure to make the Service defensive but also, it was hoped, bring about needed changes and provide legitimacy for the Park Service in the face of public criticism. Starker Leopold chaired the committee charged with considering the wildlife management issues in Yellowstone, but the “Report of the Advisory Board on Wildlife Management in the National Parks” went beyond this charge to set forth a management philosophy for the Park Service. The Leopold Report referred to the Organic Act and noted that the injunction “to conserve . . . the wild life therein” is not adequately met by the traditional approach of “protection.” Acknowledging there is not one way a biotic system “should” be, the report said the Park Service must determine its goal for wildlife management and he went further to argue for one goal: “that the biotic associations within each park be maintained, or where necessary recreated, as nearly as possible in the condition that prevailed when the area was fi rst visited by the white man. A national park should represent a vignette of primitive America.” In a paradoxical combination of mythic and scientific America, Leopold established the ideal “natural” moment as the one that awaited the European entry into the New World and acknowledged that it would be necessary to utilize scientific research in order to determine what the natural situation was at that time, as well as to create “a reasonable illusion” of this primeval moment. 37 In other words, manipulation was necessary to create the “natural.” Even though the report stressed this uniform goal for all national parks, there was a great emphasis on the “enormous complexity of ecologic communities and the diversity of management procedures required to preserve them,” thus inviting careful study of the conditions in each park. In terms of the current overpopulation of elk, there was a clear statement that this is one of those times when human intervention was necessary in order to restore a lost natural condition: “Good park management requires that ungulate populations be reduced to the level that the range will carry in good health and without impairment to the soil, the vegetation, or to habitats of other animals.”38 Although the emphasis throughout the report was on management—how to scientifically manage the parks in order to restore wildlife and habitat to this “primeval” moment, interestingly the message taken from it, which soon became the new NPS “tradition,” was that nature without interference from humans was the proper state of the parks. To be sure, Leopold did quote from a report from the First World Conference on National Parks in 1962: “There is no need for active modification to maintain large examples of the relatively stable ‘climax’ communities which under protection perpetuate themselves indefi nitely.”39 This seems to be the message that became incorporated in the NPS policy, even though the Leopold Report is clear that this was not the situation in the U.S. National Parks.

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Another committee was asked to review research in the parks and the result was “A Report by the Advisory Committee to the National Park Service on Research, submitted by the National Academy of Science—National Research Council,” chaired by biologist William Robbins. Directly addressing the goals of Mission 66, the report said it must ask if a major aim of the Park Service should be “the attraction of more and more visitors” by developing roads and visitor facilities.” The report argued, “the preeminent objects and purposes of the national parks are and should be their preservation and conservation with due consideration for the enjoyment by their owners, the people of the United States, of the aesthetic, spiritual, inspirational, educational, and scientific values which are inherent in natural wonders and nature’s creatures.” Putting preservation of nature before visitor pleasure—and stressing “proper enjoyment and use by the people” was an alteration of the traditional national park discourse.40 A further alteration came in the stress on the importance of science and not just in the service of preservation. In addition to parks’ values for the human spirit, “They are irreplaceable natural laboratories in which scientific studies can be carried out that would not be possible in science laboratories.” The language of the Robbins Report was particularly harsh in evaluating the NPS record regarding research: “The Committee is not convinced that the policies of the National Park Service have been such that the potential contribution of research and a research staff to the solution of the problems of the national parks is recognized and appreciated.” The Committee was “shocked,” the report said. “It is inconceivable . . . that property so unique and valuable as the national parks . . . should not be provided with sufficient competent research scientists in natural history as elementary insurance for the preservation and best use of parks.” It further suggested that the NPS did not even appear to recognize that research science could help them solve their problems.41 However, when it came to the question of whether nature should be self-regulating or managed, two voices are heard in the Robbins Report, as in the Leopold. One voice says, “Management or artificial control of the native biological resources of a park is contrary to the concept of preservation and conservation” and plants and animals should be left undisturbed as natural forces might dictate. The other voice asserts, “no national park is large enough or adequately isolated to be, in fact, a self-regulatory ecological unity, but is subject to direct and indirect modification by activities . . . within the park, and by the effect of changes in the area surrounding a park.”42 Although the report presents these voices as two different points of view, they frequently are spoken by the same person, indicating the dilemmas in human efforts to apply scientific management. Movements toward putting these ideas into practice began with Secretary of Interior Udall’s memo to new Director of the NPS Hartzog in July of 1964, laying out management principles for the NPS, well-hedged by references to standard park tradition including the Organic Act, Lane Letter (“sometimes

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called the Magna Carta of the National Parks,” he noted), and subsequent legislation, but also confirming the Leopold Report as official policy and suggesting a movement away from the development era of Mission 66.43 These ideas were implemented in the 1967 “Administrative Policies for the Natural Areas”—the “Green Book,” which made a distinct attempt to include a scientific approach, as stressed by Leopold and Robbins. In establishing the unique job description of the National Parks and Monuments, the publication quotes Lt. Doane—commander of the U.S. Army escort for the Yellowstone expedition: “As a country for sightseers, it is without parallel; as a field for scientific research, it promises great results; in the branches of geology, mineralogy, botany, zoology, and ornithology it is probably the greatest laboratory that nature furnishes on the surface of the globe.” Reference to Doane enables the Green Book to establish science as part of the origin story of the national parks. The report goes on to say, “National Parks and Monuments represent the finest examples of our country’s lands and waters, those natural features of such scenic, scientific, education, and inspirational importance that they merit commitment to national care.”44 The addition of education and science to the Organic Act’s mission is a sign of the changes in discourse that had occurred. The scientific importance of national park lands was now—officially at least—on a par with their scenic value. The Green Book, following Secretary Udall, identified the authoritative sources for park administration, including the 1963 recommendation of the Advisory Board on Wild Life Management (the Leopold Report) as forming the bases for its decisions. Further, it said, “Passive protection is not enough. Active management” is a requirement. On wildlife policy the Green Book quoted verbatim the Leopold Report, which stated that ungulate populations needed to be reduced and although natural predation was most desirable, a number of human interventions would doubtless be required.45 On fi re policy the Green Book followed the Leopold Report in arguing for controlled burns, a radical departure from the Park Service’s traditional dedication to prevention of all fi res (referred to as the “archenemy” and “Forest Fiend” by Mather in Ansel Hall’s Handbook. 46 It argued natural fi res should be allowed to burn “when such burning will contribute to the accomplishment of approved vegetation and/or wildlife management objectives,” a somewhat different form of active management. The report noted the reason for active management was “to neutralize the unnatural influences of man, thus permitting the natural environment to be maintained essentially by nature.”47 The preferred state, then, is what came to be called “natural regulation.” We hear both voices: the voice that says management techniques are necessary because of the disturbances caused by human beings and the voice that says nature can take care of itself and human influences of all kinds must end. In spite of the emphasis on active management in Leopold, Robbins, and the Green Book, in 1967 the Park Service announced a new policy of

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“natural regulation” in relation to the ungulate problem and claimed they were following the advice of the Leopold Committee, even though Starker Leopold argued, in response to this new policy, for direct reduction.48 This approach persisted as park policy into the next century, with scientific studies sometimes supporting, sometimes arguing against the policy. In Yellowstone, for example, extensive studies of ungulates and vegetation occurred into the1990s, with fi ndings indicating the “carrying capacity” of the range was much larger than had been determined by earlier scientific studies.49 On the other hand, Alston Chase focused on the political reasons for promoting natural regulation, which meant not killing elk, arguing science is manipulated toward the desired end.50 Part of the problem is that science does not provide answers that are unrelated to values. Usually unrecognized, the mythic narrative of the parks inevitably guides the goals that are set for the parks and the research that is done. Although the policy of natural regulation gave way in the 1990s or 2000s to what is called “adaptive management,” the issue of ungulate management continues, although not in Yellowstone as the elk herd was reduced “naturally” following the reintroduction of wolves. Bison, on the other hand, are excessive and lethal means of controlling the population are not popular. In Rocky Mountain National Park, on the other hand, the “Elk and Vegetation Management Plan” of 2008 seems to have met with support both in and out of the park and involves lethal controls, as well as consideration of birth control and reintroduction of natural predators. 51 Even though I found the language of natural regulation still being used by many in the Park Service—suggesting it is still part of the mythic narrative, what is more often practiced is “adaptive management,” which requires attention to the particular situation at hand, rather than a universal philosophy that says either “intervene” or “let nature take its course.” We see this in fi re management as well. NPS Management Policies in 1978, following the Leopold Report, affi rmed that “most fi res are ‘natural phenomena which must be permitted to continue to influence the ecosystem if truly natural systems are to be perpetuated.’”52 At this point, natural regulation was the primary motivation rather than the usefulness of fi re in ecosystems. Ten years later the National Parks and Conservation Association report noted that “The use of fi re lies at the heart of confl icts over scenery versus ecology in the national parks.”53 That conflict erupted later in 1988 when the great Yellowstone fi res burned 800,000 acres, which is onethird of the Park. There were those who claimed the fi res “showed Mother Nature knows what’s best for Yellowstone” and others who saw the Park Service as irresponsible in what they called its “let it burn” policy. Many took an intermediate position, still affi rming natural burns under some circumstances, but saying greater controls should be exercised. 54 The official response was to institute significant restrictions on allowing fires to burn. Adaptive management again came into play with scientific tools being used to help determine whether a natural burn would be useful or destructive in

170 Pilgrimage to the National Parks a particular ecosystem. However, threat to human developments remains the foremost determiner of whether a fi re should be allowed to burn. These issues—active management or natural regulation and the role of science, as well as human activities and presence—became central to the shaping of the Park Service for the next twenty-five years. Underlying these issues was the question of what the role of humans should be in managing and participating in nature. These are questions that get to the heart of fundamental beliefs about humans and the natural world. What is striking is the recurring need to claim that natural systems are in their desirable state when untouched by humans—which complements the Leopold Report’s focus on “vignette of primitive America.” The mythic significance of this need—so contrary to the American dedication to progress through control of nature will be explored in the following chapter.

PRESERVATION “FOR THE PEOPLE” These examples show that the questions of resource management for preservation are not separate from those of visitor use. Sometimes natural regulation is pleasing to visitors—the larger number of elk and bison the better, for example—and sometimes not—fi re suppression preserves the scenery and feeding bears provides entertainment. Further, the uses visitors make of the parks have a distinct impact on resources. Chase noted that the 1973 Master Plan for Yellowstone, responding to the reports of the 1960s, was quite clear about how the confl icts between visitors and resources should be handled. “The original purpose [of Yellowstone] must be translated in terms of contemporary connotations; as such it should read: to perpetuate the natural ecosystems within the park in as near pristine conditions as possible for their inspirational, educational, cultural, and scientific values for this and future generations.” It is the same message as in 1916, but with a greater awareness of the difficulties of preserving the natural landscape and a greater appreciation for the value of the intricacies of the natural processes and things that make up the landscape. Chase notes that with this plan, “Preservation for the fi rst time was put ahead of promotion.”55 What this meant for visitor use was generally agreed to be the promotion of “natural” activities and experiences. But how was this to be interpreted? Although at the time of Mather educational and inspirational uses were stressed as opposed to “mere recreation,” what we see happening looks quite different. A 1923 Camp Curry souvenir program during “Annual Indian Field Days” includes such activities as a parade and numerous rodeo-type contests with cash prizes, a swimming meet, a masquerade dance at Camp Curry; and an Indian Baby Show with $15 cash prize for the winner.56 Clearly times had changed by the 1950s as we see in the Wirth administration’s “Preservation of Natural and Wilderness Values in the National Parks,” which asserts they have rejected proposals for ”activities

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and devices inappropriate to the best use of the national parks.” But other proposals, the document says, “are not so clear cut. How about a ski tow, for example, or a skating rink, or a toboggan slide? Is there an appropriate place for a church in the scheme of park use? Would you say that a game room in a lodge lobby, its use for an evening of dancing, or a fi refall, are necessarily damaging to park values?”57 The Leopold Report—whose primary standard was no appearance of artificiality—would reject most of these activities. That report stated, “it seems incongruous that there should exist in the national parks mass recreation facilities such as golf courses, ski lifts, motorboat marinas . . . which completely contradict the management goal” of primitive America.58 The Green Book might accept some, but not all of those activities by applying its outdoor recreation test: “is the activity inspired by, and does its rewards derive from, the natural character and features of the park?”59 A 1967 report by geologist Darling and biologist Eichorn went even further in trying to disrupt the established narrative of the parks and proposing significant changes in practice. Their defi nition of “legitimate” enjoyment of national parks was that it “should be of that order which places fi rst the ecological well-being of those areas in relation to their perpetuation as natural biological communities and expanses of natural scenery.” Development is obviously not primary here, nor is the enjoyment of the people. The only absolute administrative principle in the NPS should be “to make ecological health or repose of an area the fi rst consideration.”60 The National Parks and Conservation Association 1988 Park Futures report on visitors took a similar defi nition, contrasting their approach to that of Mission 66, by saying the mandate to the National Parks of “preservation with compatible use” means “the first responsibility of the Service is to protect natural conditions in the parks, including the wildlife and scenery, for the benefit of the people.”61 Applying these standards, many wished to change park use dramatically. One of the developments in parks, which caught the attention of Darling and Eichorn enough for them to mention it twice, was the problem of “drive-in campsites.” The space they take up and the disruption of natural landscape they require on the one hand and the “baffling phenomenon” of how people seem to want to crowd in together on the other, led them to suggest the Park Service create no new campsites and “let existing campsites return to natural when they need repair.” This calls into question the whole park tradition of the campfi re! They also questioned allowing the continuation of fishing, when hunting had long been prohibited in national parks. “Fishing for fun” shows how unrelated this is to feelings of dependence on nature, which should be the point of fishing.62 The 1973 Yellowstone Master Plan made two suggestions for changes which indicate a radical revision of the park experience. The fi rst was to remove all lodging from the area of Old Faithful geyser—which would include Old Faithful Inn!—perhaps the paradigm of the classic tradition of

172 Pilgrimage to the National Parks the parks. Without these facilities crowds would diminish and the natural wonders could be better appreciated and protected. The plan also called for replacing auto traffic with a public transit system. Since the 1920s the mode of pilgrimage to the parks had been the auto. Traveling to the site, usually as a family; traveling through the site, with stops at significant scenic features; and car camping were prescribed elements of the pilgrimage. To take away this “right” seemed counter to the very democratic ideals of the park. The many voices raised in protest against these proposed changes showed at least some visitors preferred the “traditional park experience” including “education and inspiration,” along with all “necessary” conveniences, fi rst class roads, and a variety of entertainment rivaling what they would fi nd at home. These visitors would not easily give up their automobiles, a nightly masquerade ball, or the Firefall. Shirley Sargent’s Yosemite & Its Innkeepers, which traces concessionaires from the beginnings up to the early 1970s, gives a glimpse of what was traditional in Yosemite from the 1950s to the 1970s. The 1950s, as Mission 66 was just getting started, was “a time of high housecounts, and long waiting lines, of weekend traffic jams and delays due to road construction”— but park visitors seemed not to mind. “At Camp Curry summer sounds were of squawking jays, splashing swimmers, the ‘toot, toot’ of the Kiddie Kamp train, and the mellow band music. At night ‘LET THE FIRE FALL’ resounded and then the dance began.” Baseball and golf thrived, as well as horseback riding and hiking. By the mid-1960s overcrowding—as well as disputes between the “hippie” encampment and park rangers—brought predictions in the press that there would soon be nothing left to see in Yosemite. The Yosemite Sentinel responded, “that forecast surely represents a somewhat pessimistic view of the fragility of an area whose principal attraction is granite.” Sargent comments, “The problems still exist, but seen in their proper perspective they are a result of the enjoyment of the Park, not of its shocking misuse.”63 Offering an alternative view, coming from the “wilderness idea” we will consider in Chapter 6, Ansel Adams agreed the granite was safe, but more was at stake: “Yosemite is a somewhat fragile experience; you cannot do much harm to the cliffs but you can dislocate the ‘mood’ and the subtle qualities of the place, which are without parallel in the world.”64 During the 1950s Adams criticized the management for excessive development in letters to David Brower and even called for an end to camping on the Valley floor. “People, things, buildings, events, and evidence of occupation and use simply will have to go out of Yosemite if it is to function as a great inspirational natural shrine for all our people.” Furthermore, he wanted to end not only the Firefall, but also the “Chief Lemy Dances at the Museum” which he described as “pure, unadulterated FAKE.” That people disagreed about what should be considered appropriate and what fake is seen in Adams’ continuing support for and justification of the Christmas Bracebridge Dinner at the Ahwahnee Hotel, which many would not find

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“natural.” Begun in the late 1920s to draw winter season visitors, it was “‘an account of an English squire’s Christmas entertainment,’ modeled after Washington Irving’s Christmas at Bracebridge Hall.” Alfred Runte’s judgment is that “no importation into Yosemite Valley could have been more foreign or artificial.”65 Adams continued as co-director of the pageant until 197566 and in his 1984 autobiography continued to defend the event: “‘I feel a certain pride about the Bracebridge; its aesthetics and style directly relate to the emotional potential of the natural scene. In Yosemite there is that certain grandeur and beauty which fi ne art and music enhance and inferior human endeavors denigrate.”67 Although some would agree with Runte, clearly many agreed with Adams: the Bracebridge Dinner expanded to eight performances in 2002 to meet the increasing demand, which continues in 2011.68 Another tradition did not fare so well. The “Campfi re Pageant,” which had been staged in the 1920s was revived and revised by Bert Hansen in 1957 as “The Birth of Yellowstone National Park.” While this celebration expressed the traditional voice of the parks, both official and vernacular, a voice representing the new view of national park experience, Aubrey Haines, park historian, began to raise objections to the lack of historical accuracy in the Pageant in 1960. Although his objections were ignored at that time, in 1963 Haines’ suggestions for revisions were passed on

Figure 5.2 Squire Bracebridge (Don Tresidder) and the Peacock Pie, 1934. (Yosemite NPS Library, RL-6360.)

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to Hansen, with the result that the Pageant was not performed after that year.69 The mythic nature of the origin story came into confl ict with a new approach that emphasized a model of historical accuracy and the drama died away. The fate of the Firefall was similar in some ways. It ended in 1968—after nearly a hundred years. Not only were the traffic jams a problem, as noted earlier, but the shifting of discourse that was occurring made such an activity inappropriate. Using Bodnar’s terms it is hard to decide what is official and what is vernacular discourse. Many in both of those groups wanted the Firefall to continue. In 1988 it was reported that “Fully 20 years after the last fi re fell, naturalists on duty, especially at Glacier Point, are daily faced with the challenge of giving . . . an explanation for the Firefall’s cessation.”70 On the other hand, also in 1988, the Futures report noted, “The fi re scars from this spectacle still remain on rocks within the park.”71 About the same time Kenneth Brower reports that his father David Brower mused as he gazed up at Glacier Point, “I wonder when the scar of the Firefall will recover.” The son understood that it was not just an aesthetic point for his father. The “pale scar still shows where the fire burned away the cliff ’s lichens. Lichens are one of my father’s interests. The recovery of damaged landscapes is another of them.”72 Twenty years earlier such understandings of landscape would have been limited to a marginal few. Sargent noted that by 1972 “Ecology had become a healthy American syndrome, and the Park’s beefed up interpretive force stressed the inter-relation of man and nature.” This comment followed a note that in that year Horace Albright visited Yosemite and wrote, “I found Yosemite Valley as beautiful as I ever saw it, and I observed no evidence of harm to it by the thousands of people who have visited it in recent years.”73 To those who shared this point of view, and Sargent is sympathetic, the rush to ecology was an unnecessary intrusion on their park experience. Many mourned the passing of the old era and looked with some disdain on the new. That it was a new “syndrome” is probably a good way of conveying the ambiguity some felt about it. A new discourse—an ecological discourse—was taking shape and it was one driven at least in part by the “common people.” Environmental education was becoming by this period an accepted part of the national park narrative. Interpretation—communicating the meaning of the National Park Idea—was still important. But in addition, the importance of understanding ecological systems—which would extend beyond the park boundaries and would include humans—began to percolate. Old rituals were being questioned or falling away. Science was becoming more important to the narrative. However, rather than this being the beginning of the end for the pilgrimage, a new “spiritual” discourse was developing that expressed in a mythic way these changing attitudes toward the “natural.”

6

The Wilderness Idea

The Wilderness Act of 1964 joined the Leopold and Robbins reports in offering an alternative discourse for understanding wilderness areas and the national parks. Most of this discussion did not take place within the NPS, though they also claimed the wilderness idea as their own. Rather it is during this period that conservationists, who had long seen the NPS as their advocate, now began to see it as an opponent. As with the Leopold and Robbins reports, the wilderness bill came to fruition within the context of Mission 66 and, as with the reports, had a history going back to Wright. The call for national wilderness got its fi rst articulation in the 1920s through such Forest Service leaders as Aldo Leopold and Robert Marshall. Although there is something of a hiatus between Wright and the NPS reports three decades later, the wilderness movement was in active development during this period. Through the convergence of conservation groups—especially the Wilderness Society and the Sierra Club—in developing and campaigning for this legislation not only did the Wilderness Act pass, but a wilderness religion emerged.

WILDERNESS BEGINNINGS John Muir can be seen as a patriarch for both the idea of wilderness preservation and the development of national parks. His idea of wilderness preservation became embodied in the NPS in opposition to Gifford Pinchot’s principle of conservation through “wise use” or “highest use” in the national forests. However, with the development of the National Park Idea under the NPS in 1916, Muir’s vision of preservation waned as the focus on recreational tourism grew. To be sure, Muir affi rmed with the Sierra Club in 1892 the desire “to render accessible” wilderness lands in the mountains of the west and encouraged tourism in the early parks.1 He would have affirmed in principle the promotion of the parks practiced by Mather, also a Sierra Club member and opponent of Hetch Hetchy. 2 Encouraging people into wilderness—both so they would have the experience and to get government support—was always a narrow line to walk, but under Mather

176 Pilgrimage to the National Parks selling the parks to prove that the people wanted them to be preserved created developments that Muir would have found contrary to his vision of wilderness. Mather’s approach became the dominant mode in the Park Service, which focused on developing visitor facilities and roads so that parks might serve as America’s playgrounds. Hal Rothman, in comparing the U.S. Forest Service (USFS) and the NPS casts an interesting light on the ironies of the Pinchot-Muir positions. Rothman describes Forest Service philosophy as “of a piece with that of the Progressive Era. It emphasized concepts of the greater good as prescribed by the scientifi c and responsible few.” The Park Service, on the other hand, “grew out of an emerging national marketplace which focused on advertising, promotion, and consumption. What it offered the American public was shaped by that confident and aggressive focus.” Rothman concludes that Steve Mather’s Park Service “was of a piece with the commercial aspirations of the decade”—those very aspirations which antimoderns came to the parks to escape. Rothman says, “The agency gave up any remaining vestiges of the legacy of John Muir and sold Americans leisure and grandeur in the same fashion as its director had previously marketed borax.”3 Indeed, it was the Forest Service that responded to the heritage of John Muir when Aldo Leopold appealed to the USFS for preservation of wilderness areas in 1921, saying, “the Parks are being networked with roads and trails as rapidly as possible” in order to promote recreational tourism, appealing to those who preferred easy access and development. The Forest Service should consider “whether the principle of highest use does not itself demand that representative portions of some forests be preserved as wilderness.” Although his wilderness would allow hunting, it would be “big enough to absorb a two weeks’ pack trip, and kept devoid of roads, artifi cial trails, cottages, or other works of man.”4 Though claiming nothing more than Pinchot’s principle of “highest use,” Leopold interpreted Pinchot’s “greatest good for greatest number” to mean that the recreational needs of the minority can be served, as well as the majority, because there was sufficient land. He offered as a specific example preserving part of the Gila National Forest. He argued, “It is the last typical wilderness in the southwestern mountains. Highest use demands its preservation.”5 This persuaded the Forest Service to establish the Gila as the nation’s fi rst designated wilderness area.6 Given the NPS assertion that they preserved land while the USFS used it, the Forest Service leadership in establishing wilderness or primitive areas is another sign of how the traditional mission of the Park Service to preserve for the people, shaped by the market situation Rothman describes, kept them from being leaders in the growing conservation movement. In the 1950s, under Conrad Wirth, we see the culmination of the Mather tradition in sharp confl ict with the increasingly activist conservation tradition, especially as seen in the Wilderness Society and the Sierra Club.

The Wilderness Idea 177 The Wilderness Society was formed in 1935, with leadership from people associated with the Forest Service, including Aldo Leopold, Benton MacKaye, and Robert Marshall. Their goal was to establish a national plan for preservation of wilderness. The Wilderness Society Platform began, “The wilderness (the environment of solitude) is a natural mental resource having the same basic relationship to man’s ultimate thought and culture as coal, timber, and other physical resources have to his material needs.” Aldo Leopold stated in the fi rst issue of their publication, The Living Wilderness, that “The Wilderness Society is philosophically, a disclaimer of the biotic arrogance of homo americanus. It is one of the focal points of a new attitude—an intelligent humility toward man’s place in nature.”7 The Sierra Club, meanwhile, long allied with the NPS since its establishment by John Muir, had adapted to Mather’s tradition and “had become a quiet, largely social organization.”8 By the late 1940s, however, a group of rebels led by David Brower and Ansel Adams began to take charge and transformed the organization into a national leader in conservation. A sign of the changing times was the controversial act of changing the “words in The Sierra Club’s general Declaration of Purpose from ‘To explore, enjoy and render accessible the mountains of the Sierra Nevada’ to ‘To explore, enjoy, and preserve.’”9 In 1947 the Sierra Club and the Wilderness Society joined in sponsoring the fi rst biennial “Wilderness Conference.” Through these conferences, which brought together such diverse groups as scientists, amateur conservationists, artists, and government officials from the Departments of Interior and Agriculture, the vision of a new environmental movement began to emerge. The establishment of national wilderness legislation was a primary goal of the conferences; and two events, one from the side of the conservation community—the defeat of the proposed Echo Park Dam—and one from the side of the NPS—the success of Mission 66—eventually led to the Wilderness Act. The environmental issue that brought together various conservation groups and helped make them a strong lobby for the Wilderness Bill was the proposal “to erect a dam across the deep, narrow gorge of the Green River at Echo Park in Dinosaur National Monument.”10 What could have been another Hetch Hetchy was instead a conservation victory in the late 1950s. During this campaign the Wilderness Society under Howard Zahniser and the Sierra Club under David Brower became a team. Conservation’s victory sparked the submission of the Wilderness Bill to Congress in 1956. The second event during this period that influenced the development of the Wilderness Bill was Conrad Wirth’s development plan for the parks, Mission 66. As David Brower noted in his critique of the attempt of Mission 66 to promote itself as a wilderness preservation movement, “the Wilderness Bill was drafted by conservationists, to proceed hand in hand— they hoped—with the developing Mission 66.”11 Both the Wilderness Bill and Mission 66 are discussed at many of the Wilderness Conferences and we see through their juxtaposition two very

178 Pilgrimage to the National Parks different views of what wilderness is. At the 1957 Fifth Biennial Wilderness Conference, Director Wirth defended wilderness as being more than roadless areas. “As we build a road into Wonder Lake in Mount McKinley National Park that does not mean that the park is no longer a wilderness. The road is a wilderness road, to bring people into the wilderness, as John Muir advocated. Some magnificent wilderness can be seen from our roads.”12 He defended Mission 66 as supporting wilderness and referred to an NPS document that made this case titled, “Preservation of Natural and Wilderness Values in the National Parks,” a revised version of which was published as a publicity brochure in September 1957, now titled, “The National Park Wilderness.” By this time Mission 66 was receiving criticism from several quarters because of the excessive development taking place and the push toward modernization and urbanization that drove the project. The major goal of “The National Park Wilderness” was to meet these criticisms and establish in the public’s mind that Mission 66 was not only a successful development project, which it was, but also a long-term conservation project for the parks. Arguing pragmatically, the brochure specifically affi rmed Mission 66’s goal of increasing park use as much as possible: “The more a national park is used, profitably and beneficially, for its intended purpose, the less vulnerable are its lands to threats of commercial resource exploitation”13 As Sellars notes, Mission 66 funds were used to improve the road into Echo Park specifically to increase use (1,800% between 1950 and 1954) in order to block attempts by reclamation and forest industry to open those areas to development.14 The article argued that wilderness values were the very reason for the establishment of all national parks and they are still present throughout the parks, “Whether we speak of the preservation of a large, undeveloped, wild area, the protection of a natural feature, or the preservation of wilderness values along a roadside.”15 All these experiences are valuable and it is the job of the NPS to offer all of them to park visitors. For this reason Wirth dismissed the need for a wilderness bill for the national parks. Since the NPS “already administered the parks so as to keep them ‘unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations,’ [there was] nothing [to] be gained from placing such areas in the National Wilderness Preservation System as provided in the bill. . . . What we have now can hardly be improved upon.”16 David Brower responded with a critical review of the brochure, rejecting the notion of roadside wilderness and accusing Wirth of minimizing the distinction between these experiences, which would suggest that roadside wilderness could be expanded throughout the other areas and nothing would be lost. Brower argued that the intention of the brochure was to demonstrate that the Wilderness Bill was not needed, but that in fact it showed just the opposite because of the reminder that the Park Service could alter wilderness designations at will under the current system.17 The Wilderness Bill that was finally passed in 1964—“An Act to Establish a National Wilderness Preservation System for the Permanent Good of

The Wilderness Idea 179 the Whole People, and for Other Purposes”—was a document of compromises in order to win broad based support so the law would be effective (since Congress had to approve any recommendations for wilderness designation); and in the end even Rep. Wayne Aspinall, leader of the opposition, voted for it. The heart of the bill affirmed that some federal land should be kept in its “natural condition”—which meant “untrammeled by man.” Wilderness was specifically defi ned as undeveloped Federal land retaining its primeval character and influence, without permanent improvements or human habitation, which is protected and managed so as to preserve its natural conditions and which (1) generally appears to have been affected primarily by the forces of nature, with the imprint of man’s work substantially unnoticeable; (2) has outstanding opportunities for solitude or a primitive and unconfi ned type of recreation; (3) . . . is of sufficient size as to make practicable its preservation and use in an unimpaired condition; and (4) may also contain ecological, geological, or other features of scientific, educational, scenic, or historical value.18 The compromises some objected to included having different wilderness standards for different federal agencies (so hunting could continue, for example, in national forests) and maintaining the agencies’ statutory authority over designated lands in their jurisdiction; placing the responsibility for proposing wilderness with the federal agencies and their having ten years to make the designations; and “Special Provisions” that excepted many activities that would otherwise be disallowed if they were already practiced at the time of the Bill (for example motor boats) and other activities (such as prospecting) as long as they were done in a manner “compatible with the preservation of the wilderness environment.”19 Thus, in practical ways the wilderness conservationists were right to think they had not accomplished much 20 –except that, significantly, the NPS, for example, could not decide that an area that had been declared wilderness could be converted to a developed area—this decision would lie with Congress. Further, and at least as important, the passage of the Wilderness Act in 1964 had powerful symbolic significance in announcing a view of nature that was not only alternative to the fundamental American belief in progress and development, but also to the Park Service view seen in Mission 66 that stressed nature as site of recreational tourism. Further, one of the lasting outcomes of this process and other environmental legislation that followed was the initiation of procedures to require opportunities for public input on developments that would affect the environment. That this was difficult for an agency that was used to making its own decisions was shown in the 1991 National Parks for the 21st Century conference that included not only government officials, but also conservation leaders and scientists. Reluctant to give full compliance to legislation passed thirty years earlier,

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“Symposium participants and public comments suggested that there is already too much public involvement in NPS decision- making.” Nonetheless, the report acknowledged, “The surrender of decision-making power is inevitable.”21 Thus, democracy came to the national parks, if grudgingly, in a way that had not been true before, even though they had always thought of themselves as a premiere exemplification of the democratic way.

MYTHIC AMERICA: WILDERNESS AS EDEN AND THE FRONTIER The alternative discourses that developed in the 1960s through the Leopold and Robbins reports, the Wilderness Conferences, environmental legislation beginning with the Wilderness Act, and the popularization of environmental issues by Rachel Carson—all spoke to a new understanding of nature and the human relationship to it and the role of science in appreciating, understanding, and managing it. Though they were all quite close in philosophy compared to traditional recreational tourism, the differences and incompatibilities between them as they attempted to reconceive humans in nature with the help of science and spirituality are especially interesting. Inevitably these explorations—including those of scientists— were placed within a religious frame because issues of meaning and value were at stake: the place of humans in nature, the value of nature in itself, and the significance of the place and people of America. In keeping with the understanding of mythic America that has been presented in previous chapters, the power of America’s primeval origins was offered as an argument for the preservation or restoration of wilderness. There are certainly continuities with the earlier versions of the narrative, but also significant differences. What this work has identified as three stages of this mythic narrative all rely on the power of primal America—the land without people—which restores Americans as they connect with it. The earliest version, during the time of the establishment of the fi rst national parks at the end of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, focused on the experience of the sublime that occurred through experiencing the power of the American landscape—God’s Creation. The second version began with boosters’ See America First campaign and culminated in the National Park Idea, from the establishment of the National Park Service through Mission 66. In this stage the God-given American landscape remained dominant but now with an emphasis on the nation and the close association between good, regenerated citizens and travel to the national parks. With the rise of the wilderness and environmental movements, a third version of the narrative developed in which nature itself was central, along with its intimate connections to the human spirit. 22 The Americanness of the land continued to be stressed and the old mythic themes reemployed, but there was a new articulation of “earth religion”—non-institutional,

The Wilderness Idea 181 varying in doctrines and forms, and frequently connected with science. There was a general affi rmation of the power and beauty found in nature as the source of life which humans must be in touch with (psychically and/ or physically) in order to be whole. This was present in the narratives of the sublime and American sacred space as well, but at this point it came to the forefront. Dominant in these narratives are the tropes of Eden and the frontier that we have seen earlier. The image of Eden announces a primal perfection— the unpeopled land viewed by the fi rst Europeans is now preserved in wilderness: roadless lands, inhabited by neither humans nor their livestock or gardens. This is a place of harmony, a place for restoration and relief from the noise, development, and crowds of civilization. The frontier image shares much with Eden. It is also a pristine place, but the stress is now on the challenge of survival, of proving one’s mettle by conquering nature, something one is deprived of in the urban, industrialized world. Both Eden and the frontier are presented as pristine wild lands out of which the nation—nature’s nation—blossomed. Versions of this narrative are found in forms ranging from scientific reports to park promotions to photography and poetry. We will examine a variety of these forms. This story owes much to the analyses of American culture by Frederick Jackson Turner and, more recently, Roderick Nash. American history professor John Caughey noted at the 1961 Wilderness Conference that Turner’s “The Significance of the American Frontier,” announcing both the foundational importance of the frontier to the development of the American character and the end of the frontier, was written at the same time that John Muir was organizing the Sierra Club, whose primary mission was the preservation of the wilderness that remained. 23 There is a continuation of Turner’s thesis through the park and wilderness literature of the twentieth century, and indeed it is related to the arguments made in this work. Turner’s overt thesis, however, did not rely on the specialness of the American land so much as the special process undergone by those who came to the Puritan’s “desolate wilderness fi lled with wild beasts and wild men” and the succeeding generations as they continued westward toward the Pacific. The connection is close, however, as in both cases the experience with the land makes Americans the exceptional people they are. For Turner, though, it was an evolutionary process. The pioneers had to face the inhospitable wilderness and survive by conquering both the uncivilized land and native peoples and through this Europeans became Americans and developed a strength of character that continued to possess them as they went through successive stages of evolution to become Modern American Man. 24 Mark Harvey’s study of Howard Zahniser, the chief architect of the Wilderness Bill, sees Turner’s sense of frontier in Zahniser’s arguments for wilderness preservation: “It is the land that has made us all Americans, and the moral is that it is the land which must be preserved to save our Americanism.”25 Douglas Scott’s book on the Wilderness Act uses Roderick

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Nash’s ideas on wilderness—which are clearly related to Turner, with modifications by Muir—as the organizing concept. Nash wrote the first edition of his Wilderness and the American Mind as a dissertation which was completed in 1964 (the year the Wilderness Act was passed) and published in 1967, so he is affected by the cultural milieu of this period as well as shaping it, and is clearly a “wilderness defender,” both at the time he wrote his dissertation and in the 2001 4th edition of the book (which shows its continuing power as a discourse that speaks to the American public).26 Scott says he takes from Nash the recognition that “this fundamental value of wilderness was itself an American concept.” He presents the pristine natural world not as background, “but as the essential fabric of a distinctive American culture.” The defense of the wilderness was not made on the basis of recreation or for scientific study, but “for sustaining the unique American character shaped by our national encounter with the wild frontier.”27 These images of Eden and the frontier have been used to interpret the relation of American culture to the land. In Gary Ferguson’s The Great Divide: The Rocky Mountains in the American Mind, for example, two distinct kinds of passion for nature are identified: “nature as a rugged challenge, a stage for heroic struggle”—the frontier, for example—and “nature as munificent, a source of solace and entertainment, health and inspiration,” a more Edenic image.28 We see both of these in the literature. Although the frontier image dominates, it carries with it the unspoken story that the same process that developed American values also led to the destruction of wilderness that we now regret. On the other hand, the Edenic image suggests an unchanging world that would seem to allow neither humans nor the dynamic processes of nature. The American narrative of the frontier and its importance to the American character is presented at the 1961 Wilderness Conference. Secretary of Interior Stewart Udall spoke at the Conference, but the substance of his remarks comes as he reads from Wallace Stegner.29 In a seeming departure from Turner, what is crucial, Stegner says, is not the conquest, but the “wilderness idea” that is “a spiritual resource . . . which has helped form our character and that has certainly shaped our history as a people.” Something will have gone out of us as a people if we ever let the remaining wilderness be destroyed. . . . Without any remaining wilderness we are committed wholly, without chance for even momentary reflection and rest, to a headlong drive into our technological termite-life, the Brave New World of a completely man-controlled environment. We need wilderness preserved—as much of it as is still left, and as many kinds—because it was the challenge against which our character as a people was formed. Contrasting to the “Brave New World” of industrialized America he rejects, is the “’American experience’ [that] has been the confrontation of

The Wilderness Idea 183 old peoples and cultures by a world as new as if it had just arisen from the sea.”30 The myth of Eden weaves through this vision, and the wilderness is seen as a primal source of America’s exceptionalism and special character; but at the same time “challenge” and “confrontation” speak to the Turnerian themes of the frontier experience. The value of reliving the frontier recurs in advocacy for wilderness, usually without an acknowledgement that the pioneer’s impulse to conquer elides easily with the wilderness fan’s desire for adventure, self-reliance, and opportunity to survive using one’s own resources. This is explicitly seen in the “NPS National Park Wilderness” brochure, which was included as an appendix to the Conference proceedings, as it identifies wilderness with “A place where one can experience a feeling of adventure such as the pioneer might have felt in conquering the frontiers.”31 Brower’s foreword to the collection of essays saw this as the problem with the American frontier story: “Wilderness was the frontier and Progress celebrated its retreat. As we destroyed wilderness, it built us.” The conference called for a revision of this story.32 Sigurd Olson, conservationist and writer who was involved in several Park Service advisory boards, offers such a revision at the conference, but the nostalgia for the possibilities that faced the pioneers is explicit. Our forefathers did rather well: “Facing the unknown they had conquered a virgin continent with their bare hands. To them the wilderness was a power . . . they must overcome or die. Waste was of no moment, there was so much of everything. . . . That frontier was one of challenge and deep satisfaction. There was freedom and violence and adventure.” The result of their success was, of course, our loss; and Olson calls for an “evolution of mind and spirit” that will allow us to “look at wilderness, not as savages, not as pioneer exploiters, but through the eyes of enlightened man with understanding and appreciation of its real meaning.”33 This is a revision of Turner in that he is not saying the frontier hypothesis worked until we ran out of frontier, but rather that we have grown up and are wiser than the savages and pioneers; and we know conquest of wilderness is not the way to become civilized Americans. In spite of this new vision, the loss of that earlier time, when all was freedom and abundance, is viewed with regret. Udall offers Wallace Stegner’s nontraditional take on the power of the frontier wilderness as he says, “we were in subtle ways subdued by what we conquered”34 —in this way not denying the powerful hold of the conquest, but also redeeming the ancestors who, in spite of (rather than because of) their conquest, were touched by the restorative powers of the wilderness. The Leopold Report, discussed in Chapter 5, participates in the stories of mythic America as well. A new Eden is imagined as it says, “A national park should represent a vignette of primitive America.” This created vignette was a way of perpetuating the Edenic origins of America, though omitting the presence or the effect of native peoples at that time. To be sure, we see a significant change in the narrative as the Leopold Report

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stressed the importance of research in determining the primal condition and achieving it. Nonetheless, in both cases the pristine land is the source of what makes America America and to experience it is to re-experience these primal powers. However, there is a conflict in Eden. The ideal experience is that of the fi rst Europeans who came into an untouched land. However, this experience will be recreated by human manipulation and artifice, which will remain hidden. Restoring and maintaining the primitive scene seems a paradoxical way of undoing the work of civilization. Sellars notes, “this New World imagery suggested a kind of wilderness pastorale—that had enormous appeal to many in the Park Service.”35 What remains somewhat unclear is whether the report intended to maintain the parks in this primitive state (which seems to be implied)—in which case the museum language often used in the Park Service makes perfect sense—or whether natural processes should be allowed to occur on their own once the primitive condition was restored. The Robbins Report, while seeming to affirm the Leopold Report, is quite explicit on this point: “The Committee recognizes that national parks are not pictures on the wall; they are not museum exhibits in glass cases; they are dynamic geological complexes with self-generating changes. To attempt to maintain them in any fixed condition . . . would not only be futile but contrary to nature.”36 This conversation continues two decades later as Paul Schullery, writing an Afterword to the 1986 edition of Freeman Tilden’s National Parks, notes changes in ecological understanding that have taken place since Tilden’s time. Chief among them is the reality of change: “There is nothing, nothing at all, static about a national park.” However, Schullery reports that in a conversation with Starker Leopold shortly before his death in 1983, “Starker maintained, as his report had in 1963, that the parks should be managed so that they stayed pretty much as when whites first saw them. You maintained the vignette, interfering as little as possible, but holding to an established line.”37 The mythic power of the primal origin shapes the Leopold Report—and in ways that seem to work against its emphasis on research. The management policies of “natural regulation” and “restoration” also have their mythic dimensions. The 1988 Futures report on park resources continued to affi rm the policy of natural regulation, while at the same time acknowledging the reality and desirability of active scientific management. 38 For natural regulation the mythic ideal is nature without the influence of humans—primitive America—but human science is called on to affirm the on-the-ground validity of this approach. “Restoration” implies there is an ideal time to which to return. At the1963 Wilderness Conference, scientist Stephen Spurr attempted to expose the inadequacy of this notion, asserting that “wilderness” is a sociological rather than a biotic phenomenon, and that humans should “manage the forest itself skillfully, silently and inconspicuously to modify the forest ecosystem so that it most nearly approximates those types which are desirable from man’s viewpoint.” The mythic narrative of restoration wants to deny human choice and domination by

The Wilderness Idea 185 claiming to restore nature to a primeval natural state, while actually asserting the unlimited power of human beings and/or science to manipulate the natural world as they wish.39 A powerful exploration of the themes of Eden and the frontier and humans’ role in nature is found in the Sierra Club’s first publication geared to a wide public audience in 1960, This Is the American Earth, with photos by Ansel Adams and other photographers and text by Nancy Newhall. In his history of the Sierra Club, Michael Cohen describes the book to be “no less than a transformation of the American myth of the frontier.”40 American Earth presents the history of environmental insights and disasters in the New World within the larger context of stories of environmental degradation around the world. It is thus the mythic story of the “last chance” for a new Eden. When the Europeans reached the New World, “Here still was Eden” where red men . . . lived on the wild earth lightly.” But we made it into an old Europe—rebuilding civilization in the old mold. But in spite of ourselves, “in this rich wilderness,” ideals of freedom and democracy erupted and “we were born native to this earth” as we came with Jonathan Edwards to see “Divine Glory . . . appear in everything.”41 Newhall’s text shows the power of the land to shape Americans ideals, as well as the divine connection of humans and nature. Most of the American story, however, is about a frontier to be civilized, wild animals and people to be conquered, until we reach the Pacific: “Was this the ending of our dream of freedom? The end of Eden?” The book predicts apocalypse, but it also gives hope. The text asks, “Shall men not learn from life its laws, dynamics, balances? Learn to base our needs not on death, destruction, waste, but on renewal? . . . Learn at last to shape a civilization in harmony with the earth?”42 So an alternative is hoped for—but it is not clear what might have been done differently. Fewer bison killed? Land farmed with greater care? Yet farming and trapping would have occurred. At what point should/could humans have said, “Enough”? Though the book is meant to offer an alternative to the narrative of America, the story is not clear. Is it a story of a return to Eden? Or a New Frontier? The evocation and reenactment of Eden and the frontier are both returns to primal origins for spiritual restoration—whether through adventure or contemplation. Kenneth Erickson, in “Ceremonial Landscapes” has noted that “the strongest arguments for the creation and retention of [national parks and wilderness] have rested on some beneficial effect on the psychology of Americans.” Even though he specifies “psychological,” the thrust of his article is to use religious categories to interpret the function of the parks,43 and indeed I agree that wilderness preservation has been defended as necessary for its powers of spiritual healing by everyone from humanists to scientists. At the 1961 Wilderness Conference, Ansel Adams, for example, spoke of wilderness as “vast resources of spiritual enlightenment” and said “it suggests a new religion, the revelation of which is comprehension of the vast cosmos and the ultimate purpose and validity of life. In this sense, wilderness is ‘sacred.’”44

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Behind many of these visions of restoration through nature is an antimodern protest against “overcivilization” with wilderness offering an opportunity for salvation. Bob Marshall said in 1930, “There is just one hope of repulsing the tyrannical ambition of civilization to conquer every niche on the whole earth. That hope is the organization of spirited people who will fight for the freedom of the wilderness.”45 At the 1961 Wilderness Conference Howard Zahniser described the wilderness we should “protect forever” as areas “where the freedom of the wilderness still lives on unfettered by the restrictions of the urban industrial life. . . . Where a human being can still face natural conditions directly without the mediating conveniences and instruments of domination.”46 The vision is an alternative to American “progress” and technological mastery of the earth. This discourse puts nature and civilization at odds, with the degree of separation varying. Sometimes, as in Leopold, the fruits of modernity are used to recreate the primal. Sometimes, as in Adams’ “The Park Concept” in These We Inherit, the time of the plow and the axe are portrayed as “wreaking certain havoc, but permitting revival,” because humans are still connected to the earth, while with the advent of technology “men turned upon the land and its resources with blind disregard.”47 In the purest wilderness ideal, human intervention—or even presence—is destructive of nature. This separation of humans and nature recalls the questions Cronin raised in “The Trouble with Wilderness.” Zahniser included words in the Wilderness Act that Cronin cites as problematic: “A wilderness, in contrast with those areas where man and his own works dominate the landscape, is hereby recognized as an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain.”48 In Zahniser’s “Wilderness Forever” speech the language is slightly but significantly different, reading after “untrammeled by man,” “where man himself is a member of the natural community, a wanderer who visits but does not remain, whose travels leave only trails.”49 At the Planning Conference on Parks and Open Spaces in 1955 Zahniser said we need “areas of the earth within which we stand without our mechanisms that make us immediate masters over our environment—areas of wild nature in which we sense ourselves to be, what in fact I believe we are, dependent members of an interdependent community of living creatures that together derive their existence from the sun.” He went on to acknowledge Cronin’s assertion that humans construct the idea of wilderness: “By very defi nition this wilderness is a human need. The idea of wilderness as an area without man’s influence is man’s own concept. Its values are human values. Its preservation is a purpose that arises out of man’s own sense of his fundamental needs.”50 Cronin would affi rm this and ask whether such a construct is useful either for human needs or the natural world. But rather than pursuing these ideas, the language of the Bill goes further than Zahniser’s speeches to separate humans and wilderness, as if they did exist independently of one

The Wilderness Idea 187 another, which Cronin would see as both a logical and tactical error. This strong separation, which seems to keep wilderness from the desecrating effects of human beings, is also seen in the 1961 Wilderness Conference collection in David Brower’s editorial comment on the “National Park Wilderness” brochure’s assertion that “‘time can restore wilderness and heal an abused landscape.’” Brower says, “one of the most important attributes of wilderness is the flow of evolutionary force that persists there, essentially uninterrupted by man and his technology.” He is not arguing against the use of science to restore nonwilderness lands, but emphasizing a pure “wilderness” “that would seem to promise the greatest security for the topquality wilderness which remains.”51 This demand for purity, along with the Wilderness Act’s strong separation of humans and wilderness, may well be tactical maneuvers designed to create the strongest possible barriers against compromises on lands designated as wilderness. But they are also part of the developing discourse that sets wilderness apart from human culture. Secretary of Interior Stewart Udall brought this into the official discourse when he said in a 1964 policy statement (which, at the same time affirmed active management), “Park management shall recognize and respect wilderness as a whole environment of living things whose use and enjoyment depend on their continuing interrelationship free of man’s spoliation.”52 Varying and conflicting beliefs about the relationship of humans and nature and the role humans should play in active preservation created tensions among those in the conservation community. The growing environmental movement was at odds with the wilderness movement;53 even within the Sierra Club there were many different points of view. Indeed the tension is seen in the collaboration between Adams and Newhall in the creation of American Earth. Each had different conceptions of what the focus of the exhibition should be—and of the place of human beings in nature. Newhall, in line with her interest in Aldo Leopold’s biocentrism, asserted that “‘Man is a part of Nature,’” and therefore should not be privileged above the rest of nature. For Adams, on the other hand, preservation was “an effort by humanity for humanity. . . . Wilderness was a source of inspiration, a manifestation of God in the most basic form. Newhall was unwilling to accept Adams’s emphasis on ‘pure’ wilderness and the distinction between humanity and nature that it implied.”54 We see these issues in the comments Newhall received as she worked on the text. Western American historian Bernard DeVoto affi rmed her view: “‘People and their societies are part of the order of nature, though only the new crop of ecologists are willing to recognize that fact,’” but also went on to warn her, “‘I suggest you scrutinize carefully every passage which might suggest that birds and glaciers are more important than people.’” Adams was distressed that such an issue should even be raised because he thought it should be obvious that their work was about people. 55 George Marshall (brother of Robert Marshall) sided with Adams and said in a revealing statement about the tensions that were developing that he was “troubled

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about introducing the idea of resource conservation into an exhibition that had originally proposed to represent the spiritual values underlying wilderness preservation.”56 As American Earth turned out, it included both the valuing of wilderness without human traces, as an inspiration for people and a convergence of human and natural, as the hope for environmental salvation. The fi rst is seen, for example, as the text says, “More and more of us came to love wide solitudes/ . . . [and] returned, reluctantly,/ to civilization and the smallness of a house”—emphasizing the separation of nature and culture, illustrated by “The Tetons Thunderstorm,” showing the unbridled power of nature with no sign of the human enterprise. The convergence is seen, for example, in the opening, two-page photo of “Winter Sunrise, the Sierra Nevada, from Lone Pine, California,” which highlights snow covered mountains, but includes a light-filled foreground of cottonwoods, a pasture, and a horse grazing, with the words, “This, as citizens, we all inherit. This is ours, to love and live upon, / and use wisely down all the generations of the future.”57 Spaulding argues that Adams and Newhall rewrite the Turnerian myth of the frontier by following Walt Whitman in bringing together the worlds of nature and civilization in a unified vision. 58 While it is not obvious to me that the book does so, nor that it intends to, this photograph provides evidence of a movement in that direction.

ANSEL ADAMS’ PHOTOGRAPHY AND THE RELIGION OF NATURE Despite the various and often confl icting visions of humans and nature, Ansel Adams’ photography strongly evoked the mythic dream of primal America and gave expression to the emerging nature religion of the 1960s and onward. His art spoke not only for the wilderness philosophy he promulgated, but also for the larger environmental movement for whom his photography still expresses the sacredness of nature. He fi rst visited and photographed Yosemite in 1916 at the age of fourteen, and became a Sierra Club member three years later. Yosemite would remain at the center of his art, his conservation activism, and his daily living for the rest of his life. His photographic journey took him into the objectivist “precision realism”59 of Group f/64, which rejected romanticism and affi rmed modernism, as found in poet William Carlos Williams, “no ideas but in things.”60 The things of nature were where he found his ideas; and, under the influence of Alfred Stieglitz, he began to see his emphasis on technical mastery as limiting the expression of the emotional experience the “things” evoked. He remained an objectivist—rejecting the term “pictorial” for his photographs after 193161—but followed Stieglitz’s idea of the “equivalent” which brought “objective essences and subjective experiences” together in a photo. Art critic Anne Hammond, using Whiteheadian philosophy, which

The Wilderness Idea 189 she claims influenced Adams, says his experience of the process of composition was “neither purely objective nor wholly subjective; it was instead evidence of his own participation in a relational event that was subjectively symbolic but also perfectly ecological.”62 The goal here was to avoid what was seen as “romantic sentimentality”—art that displayed the emotions of the artist. Rather, it was the “objective” world as it was experienced by the artist that the photograph hoped to express. Art, religion, nature, and conservation were interwoven for Adams. Articulating the connection between art, humans, and nature in the introduction to his 1948 Portfolio One he said: “To photograph truthfully and effectively is to see beneath the surfaces and record the qualities of nature and humanity which live or are latent in all things. . . . Art, said Alfred Stieglitz, is the affirmation of life. And life, or its eternal evidence, is everywhere.”63 At a Wilderness Conference Adams spoke of the role art has played historically in revealing God. “I think it is time that the Glory of God be revived; only now, instead of saints and angels, myths and legends, ritual and dogma, we have the vast and luminous evidences of God in the realities of the cosmos in which we live. . . . Man must affirm his spiritual kinship with the eternity of Nature.”64 Hammond identifies this kinship as “the underlying creative process of the universe, that Adams took as the ultimate subject of his work.”65 This process is the “resource” which nature offers. Adams speaks of this in his essay on “The Park Concept” in These We Inherit. He says we have advanced to the stage where we can become aware of “other than materialistic resources. . . . They are, in fact, the symbols of spiritual life—a vast impersonal pantheism—transcending the confused myth and prescription that are presumed to clarify ethical and moral conduct. The clear realities of nature seen with the inner eye of the spirit reveal the ultimate echo of God.”66 This is not the religion of institution, but the religion of nature. The connection of this understanding of the depth relation of humans and nature to his art and conservation activism is clear: the photograph could express the equivalency between natural and psychic forces; and the experience of this process would enable viewers to embrace conservation values, as well as connect to the power of the American land. More broadly, the photograph provided a model of the “universal and sacred relation of things to each other.” In the “Zone System” that was foundational to his photography, everything in the photograph must be given its significance. And so it should be with the way human beings live together.67 The last section of American Earth expresses, through text and art, what has been described as Adams’ earth religion: “Shall we not come as pilgrims to these sanctuaries? . . . You shall enter the living shelter of the forest./ You shall walk where only the wind has walked before.” The photographs for these lines are Stehekin River Forest, Northern Cascades, Washington—dense forest that seems at the same time overwhelming and embracing—and Child in Mountain Meadow, Yosemite National Park, California. Departing from his usual “unpeopled” photographs, the child

190 Pilgrimage to the National Parks

Figure 6.1 Stehekin River Forest, Northern Cascades, Washington, 1958. Photograph by Ansel Adams. (Collection Center for Creative Photography, the University of Arizona © 2012 The Ansel Adams Publishing Rights Trust.)

only emphasizes further the sacred time and place of this moment. American mythology frequently presents the desire to be the first—literally—to see a place, and Newhall and Adams reveal the mythic power of this dream.

The Wilderness Idea 191 Clearly far more than the wind has walked this meadow in Yosemite!—and the child both confi rms this fact (the child is not exploring new worlds on his own) and confi rms the mythic meaning: there is an eternal newness and possibility in the powers of nature experienced in the wilderness, preserved for all generations. This is not management policy; it is a prayer. The book ends with the Ansel Adams photograph “Aspens, Northern New Mexico” (which became a signature for the Sierra Club) and the text, “Tenderly now let all men turn to the earth.”68 This is the religion of the earth that Adams’ photography gave visual expression to, religion—or perhaps better, spirituality—that was and is a steady underlying component of various environmental movements. As Fox points out, environmental movements were never a “church religion,” but “a quality of credo and hosanna runs through their thoughts and writings. They are communicants of a common faith.”69 Although this may be so, the “commonness” is not obvious. Some, as Adams, identify themselves as pantheists; others associate with Native American or Asian traditions. At a Sierra Club supported conference in Bucharest in 1972, Arne Naess articulated the principles of “Deep Ecology”70 and this soon

Figure 6.2 Child in Mountain Meadow, Yosemite National Park, California, 1941. Photograph by Ansel Adams. (Collection Center for Creative Photography, The University of Arizona © 2012 The Ansel Adams Publishing Rights trust.)

192 Pilgrimage to the National Parks became a term used by many without denoting any specific group or set of beliefs to describe the combining of religion, nature, and conservationism. Just what all these share is not obvious. Fox tries to capture the “common faith” by saying that for conservationists “meaning resides less in matter than in spirit, less in striving than in stasis, less in humans than in Nature, less indoors than outdoors.”71 Although every statement, except perhaps the last, is in some ways inaccurate as a description of “ecospirituality,” there is also some truth in all of them. First, “matter,” if we think of it as “materialism,” associated with capitalistic progress and utilization of things, is indeed inferior in this way of thinking to spirit. However, spirit is inexorably connected with the matter of nature. Adams says, “There is always a relationship with reality, or actuality.”72 Second, in a similar way, if “striving” is seen as the urge to overcome and conquer, then it lacks the sense of presence, sometimes described as oneness, that humans can experience in nature. However, the nature of nature is not stasis. It is constant, dynamic movement and interaction; and if we follow Hammond’s lead in connecting Adams’ thought to Whitehead’s, the “actual world is a process” that includes human subjectivity and the world’s objectivity.73 Third, the assertion of a hierarchy of nature over humans—biocentrism over anthropocentrism—would be affi rmed by many, but others would argue, with Whitehead, for a process including both. Finally, perhaps all, including Adams, would agree on the value of the great outdoors! Perhaps another element shared by all forms of nature religion is the solitude—a word that runs through all this literature—his photographs evoked. Rarely are humans part of the picture, even though, as we saw in the disagreements between Newhall and Adams, paradoxically Adams asserted the photographs are about people—that is, they are the “equivalent”—the connection between the powers of nature and the human spirit. The spiritual power of this humanity-free nature is central to the wilderness vision, but also to most other discourses associated with the parks. Indeed, what is common to all the narratives that have been presented in this chapter— natural regulation, wilderness, and restoration—is that what is valued is a landscape that remains untouched by people. Thus, the heart of the national park and wilderness mythic narratives depends on the refusal to acknowledge that native peoples planted crops, killed animals, set fi res, and fully inhabited this land that the mythic narrative says is pristine.74 In the fi rst two narratives, natural regulation and wilderness, the land is better off without people. In the third, restoration, people are needed to create the illusion of the favored, pristine time. The emphasis on peopleless landscape is reinforced in Adams’ photography. In response to his Kings Canyon folio, an art critic asked, seeing the monumental landscape empty of people, “Doesn’t anybody go there?”75 In the midst of a western landscape rephotography project of photographers Mark Klett and Byron Wolfe and writer Rebecca Solnit, Klett said while rephotographing Adams’ view of

The Wilderness Idea 193 Lake Tenaya, “What we saw in the Adams photographs is: ‘This is nature. And it’s beautiful because you’re not there.’”76 Nonetheless, Adams incarnated through his powerful photography the wilderness experience and reinforced the national parks as sacred sites. Bodnar’s “commemorations” occurred whenever people traveled to the parks or even when they opened a Sierra Club coffee table book. The sacred memory commemorated is of eternal American lands. In this pilgrimage, certainly vernacular, but accepted by officialdom, it is not the ranger who is the guide into the mysteries, but each individual who enters the pristine woods or stands, as the child in the meadow, where only the wind has walked before—if only in her or his imagination.

RETHINKING NATURE AND HUMANS Even as Adams’ photography was speaking to this large, amorphous group who affirmed spiritual power in nature, alternative paths were developing which left behind his privileging of peopleless nature, though his photographs continued to touch even those who would have rejected his ideas, as they evoked the mythic powers of American land. The new narrative that was intruding, and which would allow for people in nature, developed out of a series of new insights and values that called into question the wilderness and national park vision insofar as it depended on fi rm boundaries between sacred and profane, between civilization and nature, between park land and not park land. This new narrative received significant popular impetus from the publication of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring in 1962, which was the springboard for the environmental movement and at the same time raised the possibility that there was no pristine land remaining—all had been touched by human beings so there was no “pure” wilderness. At about the same time, the new stress on the biotic community, which included humans with other forms of nature, meant humans were part of the picture, whether wilderness, park lands, or where one lived. This view challenged the separation of “wilderness” and “environment,” which called into question many of the presuppositions of the wilderness movement.77 Michael McCloskey, head of the Sierra Club, said in 1972, “In the context of the new environmental movement, wilderness preservation appears to many parochial and oldfashioned. It looks suspiciously like retreat to fantasy or withdrawal from the problems of the ‘real world.’”78 Scientists Darling and Eichorn‘s 1967 report went deeper, questioning the Lane Letter’s Gospel-like assertion that national parks are to be “preserved unimpaired” for the “enjoyment of the people.” They called this “rhetoric,” impossible to realize on the ground. The ideal national park, in which everything was both preserved and enjoyed, unlike in the land outside the parks, could not exist even in the parks.79 Sellars suggests

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something similar as he criticizes the Park Service for not “distinguish[ing] tourism-oriented park management from scientific, ecologically based resource management.”80 However, the implication is that there are fi rm boundaries between these two choices and not only should the Park Service distinguish between them, but should choose the latter. Darling and Eichorn did not suggest that this ideal should be abandoned. Rather, they said the national park ideal, even if it is contradictory, has immense value. Putting it in a framework of how mythic narratives function, they would say one lives with ambiguities, not requiring boundaries between them, affi rming both the competing values and struggling to fi nd a balance between them. The importance of the narrative is seen as they assert, “We would say the national park idea in its highest expression is an aspect of true religion.” A re-envisioned narrative that would allow the idea to continue, would respond to two things: “First, the opportunities for ecosystems of plants and animals to survive; and second, the need of wilderness for the human soul.”81 The ecological reason for national parks became more dominant from this period on, even as people who affirmed it continued to evoke the Lane Letter, which stressed preservation in order to bring continued enjoyment to the people. At times Darling and Eichorn seem about to join those who see the ecological as the sole reason for national parks, as they point out several times the difficulties brought on by the Park Service’s “innate philanthropic ethos.” However, their “ideal” refuses to accept dichotomous boundaries between these two reasons—ecological and humanistic, either of which, they say, would be sufficient to set apart lands as wilderness, but both of which can exist together.82 Thus, people and ecosystem do not have to be in conflict. What will bring pleasure to people is the same thing that will benefit the ecosystem. Clearly this is a mythic ideal—just as preserve unimpaired for enjoyment of the people is. But it is a different ideal that begins with a twopronged foundation, which, if followed, would result in different use of the parks and different values being enacted in pilgrimage rituals. This was the challenge for the twenty-fi rst century. Was there some way to retell the park story that acknowledged the permeable boundaries between nature and culture, people and wilderness, land in West Yellowstone and land in Yellowstone National Park, land in the U.S. and land in other parts of the world, and at the same time affirmed a mythic narrative that guided the pilgrimage rituals of those who visited the parks each year?

7

Unbounded Possibilities

By the close of the twentieth century the traditional narrative that celebrated national parks as islands where pristine America could be preserved undamaged and unchanged for the pleasure of the people was facing challenges both from new understandings of science and new on-the-ground realities in the parks and the culture at large. Although science was taking on a larger role in park management, the mythic narrative based in an unchanging primordial America made it difficult to value scientific models that ran counter to it, models that emphasized, for example, change and flux more than stability and balance. On-the-ground evidence that conflicted with the island metaphor—as air pollution and exotic plants crossed into the park and bears and bison roamed out—also encouraged adaptation of both the mythic story and the management policies that flowed from it. The idea of pristine, Edenic America was further challenged by anthropological discoveries, which had previously not been seen because they did not fit the story. The evidence showed that the Native American presence had indeed altered the landscape, so the repeated ideal of reestablishing the pristine landscape that had been the New World at the time of the arrival of white Europeans no longer fit. Finally, there was a shift in the culture at large, both demographically and ideologically, that led to a realization that there were more than Euro-Americans in America. What power would the Christian story of a lost Eden recaptured in the parks have for people who did not share that story? Or for people for whom America had not been the Promised Land, but rather the place of enslavement? Or for people who did not see a sharp divide between wilderness and civilization, but who saw nature as their natural home? If America’s national parks were going to continue to speak to the people of America, the narrative had to become more inclusive. This chapter will examine a variety of ways in which the fi rm boundaries, both physical and symbolic, that set the parks apart as special places have become more permeable. There are still parks and land outside parks, but the connections between them are becoming important in ways that may challenge the idea of parks as wholly other, as special places which are not like ordinary space, in which experiences can occur that are impossible

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outside the parks. To question this specialness, which we have labeled sacredness, seems also to call into question the possibility of examining parks as pilgrimage sites. To be sure, the traditional stories—that depend on ignoring the questions of boundaries—are still alive and well. The 2009 Ken Burns PBS series on the national parks in many ways confi rms the mythic narrative that we have seen so far. But there are also many other voices that are suggesting new narratives for the parks and for American cultural values and beliefs. Those new directions will be explored in this chapter, along with the consequences of these changes for pilgrimage to national parks. The story is, in every way, about the change in conception of boundaries. One boundary on which this book has relied is the symbolic separation between the scenic “crown jewels” of the National Park System and the rest of the park units. This study has focused on the monumental, scenic nature parks, most of which were established by 1920—less than five years after the Park Service came into existence (with the notable exception of the parks in Alaska other than Denali) and hence without initial long-range planning or regulations on use. These parks have been the foundation on which the mythic narrative has been built, and by taking this focus this book perpetuates this traditional story. Nonetheless, it is these grand parks that have shaped the National Park Idea, which continues to be the mainstream story. Another study is needed that takes into account the broader story that is told by the historic and recreation units, for example, as well by the newer nature parks which by-passed many of the development issues of the early parks by not including housing and extensive tourist amenities within the parks. Also to be considered are joint endeavors of the parks with partners.1 By creating a narrative that is inclusive of these many forms, rather than setting the “jewels” apart as the traditional narrative tends to do, the story will inevitably become richer and the connections among the various park units clearer. But this is just one kind of boundary. Within all the parks are boundary issues related to management of natural resources as well as cultural resources. “Transboundary” is a term that has come into use in the Park Service to indicate agencies working together across boundaries, with fi re control, for example.2 “Extra-boundary” is sometimes used to describe Park Service assistance to governmental or private entities to develop non-Park Service historic sites, through the National Register of Historic Places, for example. A broader term that is applicable to many of the examples we will look at is “permeable boundaries,” where elements cross the boundaries as if they did not exist—or existed only in human cartography. Recognition of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem is one outcome of acknowledging permeable boundaries. A fi nal category has to do with the boundaries between nature and culture, as with Alaska’s experiments with human habitation in parks and the Biosphere Reserve concept. In all of these cases boundaries are compromised or expanded, and the connections rather than disconnections

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between lands and between people and lands are stressed. In order for these boundaries to be reimagined, foundational Western dichotomies that position civilization in opposition to wilderness and, in a related way, science in opposition to values must be reconsidered.

RECONCEPTUALIZATIONS OF SPACE Boundaries inevitably represent the spaces they contain as different from what lies outside them. As boundaries are reimagined, the space is transformed, which allows for new representations to come into being. The interplay between the humanly constructed boundaries and the natural world creates this new meaningful space. As an example we will look at how awareness developed that Grand Canyon National Park was part of a larger spatial entity that included various—and conflicting—representational spaces that had to be acknowledged so boundaries could then be reimagined and new narratives created that allowed different groups to work together. Barbara Morehouse’s study of the Grand Canyon uses cultural geographer Edward Soja to examine how people organize geographical space and how setting boundaries is a meaning-making activity. Building on Soja, she distinguishes between understandings of space as absolute and relative. Absolute space is understood as a container, a defi ned area in which certain ideas and ways of behaving are prescribed. This fits the idea of sacred space and is, indeed, how national parks were established. Relative space, on the other hand, is an area “that supports multiple defi nitions and uses, either simultaneously or at different times, each defined in relation to certain attributes.” Morehouse also uses Henri Lefebvre’s idea of “representational space,” which holds “symbols, values, experiences, histories, and traditions—many of which are intangible and unquantifiable—that give someone (or some group) a sense of attachment to that location.”3 This understanding of the interrelationship between geographical space and human cultural representations, which is related to Rob Shield’s idea of “spatiality,”4 is essential to sacred spaces and it has been the argument of this book that the national parks do enfold the values and experiences of the American people. Absolute space makes easy sense when working with national parks. There are boundaries. There is in and there is out. Certain rules apply depending on which side of the border you are on. The “island” concept fits this perfectly. In writing about the Grand Canyon, Morehouse describes the various absolute spaces, delineated through the years as Indian reservation, national forest, private land, railroad lands, game preserve, BLM land, and national monument which then became national park, each with its different rules and different representations. However, she says, in practice, these absolute spaces had to be treated as relative spaces; people worked across boundaries both because specific issues required relative space and because

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the representational spaces did not fit the absolute boundaries (e.g., Native Americans’ representational homeland went beyond the reservations and the Grand Canyon’s representational space encompassed more than what was within Park boundaries).5 In the early 1970s, contestations over representational space occurred as environmentalists sought to extend the Park boundaries to include the representational space of the Grand Canyon. At the same time, the Havasupai argued for a land transfer, wanting to expand their actual boundaries to include what they saw as their representational space. Acknowledging absolute boundaries, while working with relative boundaries, buffer zones were considered. Instead of absolute space, there would be a sharing of jurisdiction over relative space and a transition zone between different land use practices. There were compromises. The Havasupai did receive some new lands, but with Park Service controls over uses of the area and the requirement to allow park visitors crossing access; and, on the other hand, they received access to park lands for traditional uses.6 This was not simply a Park Service decision, but joint meetings were held to work out details of the agreement—an acknowledgement of the partnership required across boundaries.7 The NPS also obtained new land, some of which they had to share. In both cases the absoluteness of boundaries was transgressed in order to deal with actual, relative realities. The eventual outcome of these developments was the “park officials at long last acknowledged that the Park existed within a larger regional context” and might have to make concessions in absolute space to accommodate representational spaces of its neighbors.8 Given the apparent breakdown in the functionality of the concept of absolute space, one might argue for a model of relative space that allowed different usages at different times or places in a way that would sidestep contestation. However, Morehouse notes that relative boundaries are not conducive to the creation of representational space, which she sees as central to the meaning-making aspects of space construction, and, I would add, to narratives that grow out of and create sacred spaces. Perhaps the awareness of absolute boundaries must be present, along with the willingness to cross boundaries, in order for the meaningful work to be done “regarding how the area should be shared, inhabited, protected, and used”9 and through this new narratives could be created.

A NEW ROLE FOR SCIENCE One way of reconceptualizing space is through the idea of the ecosystem. Because this model necessarily crosses humanly constructed boundaries, absolute boundaries must be tempered, though not necessarily dissolved. Although Forest Service land, Park Service land, state lands, and private lands all remain identifiable, the emphasis in this model is on the natural

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space that does not respect the boundaries that have been established by various public agencies and private landowners. The interaction between human perceptions and conceptions on the one hand and the given environment on the other can create a new representational space whose boundaries necessarily remain permeable. The ecosystem model was not that long ago a new way of reconceptualizing space and reframing boundaries. Although it may now seem commonsensical, at least to some, the idea of looking at not only what lay within the boundaries of the parks, but also the interactions occurring across boundaries, changed the way the space was conceived and transformed management policies. The notion of an ecosystem as a way of conceptualizing space is profoundly useful in reimagining the narrative of the parks. This model brings a focus on interactivity among living things rather than on an isolated individual plant or animal. The interactions mean dynamism which means change. Thus, possibilities for new narratives come into play—and indeed a new narrative is needed to explore the possibilities of this model. However, before the new narrative could become part of the park story and be played out on the ground, a new relationship between the Park Service and scientific research and management had to be developed. This development took some time. The elements of interactivity, dynamism, and change, which are central to a scientific ecosystem approach, were actually present early on—though not using ecological science—when John Muir said in My First Summer in the Sierra, “When we try to pick anything out by itself we fi nd it hitched to everything else in the universe.”10 However, the dominant voice in park management, which fit with the dominant narrative, was the static image of preserving the parks as they were before the coming of the white man. In the version given in the Leopold Report we do see an awareness of the greater ecosystems affecting parks as it recommended buffer zones for animals leaving the parks—that mediating model Morehouse sees in the Grand Canyon when two parties have stakes in the same lands. The report also argues for creating an integrated habitat, which we could call an ecosystem. However, the goal is a static one that requires strict boundaries: “that the biotic associations within each park be maintained, or where necessary recreated, as nearly as possible in the condition that prevailed when the area was fi rst visited by the white man.”11 Science was to be used to help create this illusion of naturalness, but what would be created would be a scene that did not change and that was radically different from the land outside the park; the boundaries could be virtually absolute. At the same time others were voicing the need for a more dynamic model. It was argued in 1967, in reference to visitor education, that Interpretation must “move away from the connotation that parks are primarily museums of natural curiosities. . . . Such an image connotes a fragmented, static series of things rather than a dynamic viable whole.” Such static images suggest “an object that is being preserved as it is by putting boundaries around it.”12 This

200 Pilgrimage to the National Parks is in line with the National Academy of Sciences Robbins Report from 1963 which described the parks as a “system of interrelated plants, animals, and habitat (an ecosystem) in which evolutionary processes will occur under such control and guidance as seems necessary to preserve its unique features.”13 However, natural regulation became the dominant model for park management and because this policy stressed that nature could manage itself if humans did not interfere, scientific research and application were not given high priority.14 Clearly this model was bound up with the traditional narrative, reinforcing it, but also being reinforced by it. Not until nearly the end of the twentieth century was there a significant incorporation of science into management policies. The 1990s were a time of dramatic change, which began when The Vail Agenda report in 199215 included Science and Research as one of its objectives (though only as the fifth of six) and noted part of the problem with advancing a science program was that it lacked legislative mandate.16 The National Academy of Sciences also put out a report on Science and the National Parks in 1992, repeating the general critique that had been part of the Robbins National Academy of Sciences report thirty years earlier and explicitly saying the fundamental problems related to science were “rooted in the culture of the NPS and in the structure and support it gives to research.” Therefore what was needed was “a fundamental metamorphosis.” As with the Vail report, the Academy called for a legislative mandate to “establish the explicit authority, mission, and objectives of a national park science program.” It also called for a strong, well-funded, and autonomous research program that could “provide a scientific basis for protecting and managing the resources entrusted to it.”17 Because these points had been made many times before without significant changes coming about, there was no reason to anticipate the metamorphosis that did occur. An important catalyst for this change came through the 1997 publication of Richard Sellars’ then controversial book, Preserving Nature in the National Parks. Surprisingly, people listened to this documented history of the Service’s neglect and often rejection of science. The book was taken up by Associate Director of the Park Service Michael Soukup as the opportunity to institutionalize reforms the 1992 reports had recommended. Director Robert Stanton called a series of meetings, which Sellars was invited to attend, that resulted in “The Natural Resource Challenge: The Park Service’s Action Plan for Preserving Natural Resources,” which was published in 1999.18 The plan laid out strategies for creating the scientific resources necessary to understand issues and implement responses, including what was going on outside park lands. It called for a large infusion of fi nancial resources, similar to what had been done in the past for facilities improvements in order to make a fundamental difference in the role of science in the parks. For the first time in park history significant funding for science research came, some of which went toward establishing research learning centers for visiting scientists and Cooperative Ecosystem Studies Units connecting parks with university campuses.

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Through both of these projects, the walls that had insulated parks from outside scientists were lowered. While the drafting of the Natural Resource plan was taking place, the National Parks Omnibus Management Act of 1998 included the legal mandate that had been called for by many: The Secretary is authorized and directed to assure that management of units of the National Park System is enhanced by the availability and utilization of a broad program of the highest quality science and information.19 In 1999 the National Parks Advisory Commission was given the assignment of “Rethinking National Parks for the 21st Century.” Chaired by African American historian and longtime park enthusiast John Hope Franklin, the Commission issued its report in 2001. In addition to a focus on the educational value of parks, acknowledgment of the connections between native cultures and the parks, and a call for an inclusive study of America’s past, the report challenged the Park Service to adopt conservation of biodiversity as a core principle and “to advance principles of sustainability, while fi rst practicing what it preached.” It further said, “Parks of all kinds can no longer be thought of as islands with little or no connection, cultural or ecological, to their surroundings.”20 Thus, statements that affi rmed both science-based management practices and the ecosystem model as essential to understanding and responding to management issues gained wide-spread approval, as was seen at the “Discovery 2000”conference where, for the first time, natural resource issues played an important role, illustrating that boundaries between scientists and other park managers were becoming less important.21 Soon after this conference, George W. Bush was elected President and attitudes toward environmental issues changed considerably. The fact that funding continued for Challenge projects and that energy around ecosystem issues remained high indicates that the metamorphosis that had been called for had, at least to some extent, occurred. 22

IMAGINING ECOSYSTEMS This significant break in the Park Service’s traditional approach to science was bound up with the reconceptualization of park boundaries through the ecosystem lens, which offered a “fundamental reorientation in public land management policy.”23 Accompanying this was an alteration in representational space and the narrative that articulated it. As with the recognition of transboundary realities that occurred with Grand Canyon National Park, Yellowstone National Park could now be imagined as one piece of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem (GYE). Central to bringing about this

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change was the on-the-ground awareness of the inadequacy of the absolute boundary defi nitions of the parks and the acknowledgement that parks were part of larger, unprotected or differently protected systems. Earlier discourse had spoken of the parks as islands, which preserved lands of the national parks as oases from the onslaught of development that compromised lands outside the parks. Awareness of this new representational space required the people of the ecosystem—both governmental agencies and to some extent private interests—to see themselves as part of a larger space and work together to manage it. Coordinated attempts to address issues of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem provide one of the most developed examples of attention to what the Park Service calls transboundary issues, which can usefully be looked at as an alteration of symbolic boundaries and a metamorphosis of representational space. Robert Keiter observes that “Public land law traditionally has accorded federal land management agencies virtually unlimited discretion in administering their lands, and it has treated the boundary line as sacrosanct in defi ning the realm of agency authority.” Agency loyalty is involved and the competition between the Forest Service and Park Service goes back to their origins. But it may be that more than turf wars and bureaucratic inflexibility are at work here. The symbolic power of the representational space of a national park does not disappear even though scientific information points to transboundary realities. But Keiter suggests that what I call a new representational space may be developing as both science and law encourage land managers to imagine alternative boundaries. He says, “With national values respecting the public lands and their role in the nation’s culture continuing to evolve, the ecosystem concept may have its greatest impact at this social-political level.” This is how transformation of symbolic space comes about as an image takes on power in a culture at many different levels. He adds, “There is mounting evidence that the ecosystem concept, drawn upon scientific principles yet imbued with a powerful metaphorical allure, is reshaping the contemporary societal vision of the public lands.” Thus, not only do the scientific models and studies that have grown out of this concept open a new window on understanding life in the parks, but the idea also has great metaphorical power for reimagining human life in the world. Keiter argues that a crucial piece of this development involved legal mandates that both required and enabled land managers and the culture at large to develop a new vision of public land as ecosystem. Central was the 1973 Endangered Species Act (ESA), which focused attention on the need to protect habitat for endangered species—which went beyond the boundaries of national parks or forests. 24 With the ESA providing the legal support, one beginning point for this new ecosystem vision was the Craighead bear study in Yellowstone National Park. Through radio-collar tracking of grizzlies, they discovered that the bears’ range extended far beyond park boundaries; indeed, their study of the extended range of grizzly habitat shaped the fi rst map of the Greater

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Yellowstone Ecosystem. Soon after this study was abruptly ended, all feeding of the bears at garbage dumps ended between 1968 and 1970, which resulted in the extermination of a large number of “problem” bears. 25 In 1972 with natural regulation the dominant management policy all electronic bear monitoring was halted because tagged bears were thought to take away from the naturalness of the park. With fears of grizzly bear extinction and no way to monitor them, the Interagency Grizzly Bear Study Team was formed, made up of biologists from the Park Service, Forest Service, Fish and Wildlife Service and Fish and Game representatives from three states—the fi rst significant interagency action. Electronic monitoring was restored with the resulting data indicating that 1,450 square miles was the habitat for male bears associated with Yellowstone. 26 The message was clear: to manage wildlife in Yellowstone National Park it was necessary to imagine an expanse greater than the Park and it was necessary for agencies to see themselves as part of an ecosystem and to work cooperatively in this space. Thus, the GYE as a representational space including both land and people began its evolution. 27 Awareness of transboundary issues spread as two reports detailed the issues. In 1979 the “Adjacent Lands Survey” by the National Parks Conservation Association, subtitled “No Park Is an Island,” concluded that unless agencies coordinated their efforts and addressed the problems originating outside the park, “efforts focusing on resource management within park boundaries eventually will be rendered meaningless by external forces.”28 The NPS 1980 State of the Parks report confi rmed both external threats and the need for scientific research to address them. “Without qualification,” the report said, “it can be stated that the cultural and the natural resources of the parks are endangered both from without and from within by a broad range of such threats.”29 Without data, which was sorely lacking (the report said 75% of the threats had not been documented), remediation was impossible. Strikingly, even though “external threats” obviously meant other parties were involved, the report made no attempt to address the need for agencies to work together. However, the issue of agency coordination was raised, both by those who resisted it, who feared agency cooperation would result in restrictions on development, and by those who saw the lack of cooperation as a threat to park resources. A Congressional Oversight Hearing in 1985 found that the coordination between the agencies was inadequate to the point that legislation might be necessary to reform management practices in the region. 30 The threat of having management practices imposed by Congress trumped the agencies’ proclivity toward discretionary managerial authority; and the Greater Yellowstone Coordinating Committee (GYCC), which had been created in the 1960s with representatives from Forest Service and Park Service, went to work. The fi rst step in creating an interagency coordination plan was a 1987 report summarizing resources and management plans for six national forests and two national parks in what they identified as the

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Greater Yellowstone Area. 31 With the Greater Yellowstone fi res of 1988, and the public outcry and reevaluation of fire policy that followed, the GYCC responded in 1990 with the Greater Yellowstone Area Interagency Fire Planning and Coordination Guide—a landmark in agency cooperation. That same year the Committee came out with its most groundbreaking work—a draft of their Vision for the Future: A Framework for Coordination in the Greater Yellowstone Area. “The principles and processes introduced in the Vision would ensure that no matter what the resource use, whether recreation, ‘protection of biological diversity for the greater good of human society, or timber harvest for national and international markets—ecosystem values are considered fi rst in how the resource is used.’”32 The report “called for substantial changes in management to foster coordination, emphasized preservation of ‘naturalness,’ and anticipated a reorientation of the regional economy.” Environmentalists were not too impressed by the document because it did not establish how these things would be implemented; on the other hand, the negative response of various user groups was intense. “Commodities groups accused the agencies of promoting cultural genocide and planning to expropriate land in GYE” and government officials saw the report as a “disaster.” The Committee was pressured to revise, and the fi nal draft was a watered-down version that was cut from sixty to ten pages and “Discussion of how grazing, logging, and oil and gas exploration were to be subordinate to the goal of maintaining ecosystem health was deleted from the document.” The useless rewrite actually created more attention than the draft had and in 1991 a Congressional subcommittee investigated “allegations that the top regional managers for NPS and USFS had been forcibly transferred because they supported the Vision process.33 Although the Vision was a failure in some respects, it was one important step in enabling people to imagine an ecosystem as a relative, yet powerful representational space. Along with the GYCC, a nongovernmental group contributed even more actively to the ecosystem concept. The Greater Yellowstone Coalition (GYC) formed in 1983 to be an advocate for considering the area as a whole when decisions were made about resource management. Their stated goal was that “ecosystem level sustainability and science should guide the management of the region’s public and private lands.”34 Focusing on scientific management techniques from the fi rst, the organization’s goal was to make the ecosystem concept a part of the community’s consciousness. The grizzly bear became their iconic example for this endeavor, as the scientific data on grizzly bear habitat made it clear that habitat fragmentation, especially on Forest Service lands, was a threat to this endangered species. Advocating for roadless areas and wildlife corridors also meant advocating for recognition of the GYE. The coalition brought together business and nonprofit groups as well as individuals, both in the area and the larger culture. From their beginnings the organization tried to involve a broad range of supporters, from Montana Wildlife Federation, to Audubon Society, to Good

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Sam (RV) Club. Not only did they make their voice heard within federal agencies, but expanded awareness of the concept of the GYE and helped community groups imagine themselves as part of the ecosystem. What became clearer to many working with the various groups that brought their disparate values to the ecosystem was that scientific data about ecological interrelationships was not all that was needed for commitment to a new form of land management to occur. Although the science of ecology was an essential piece of the process, alone it was not enough. The different values represented by the various stakeholders had to be part of the discussion, as well as ecosystem values around which disparate people might unite. As Keiter says, “The challenge confronting the Greater Yellowstone land management agencies is . . . to articulate an ecosystem or regional ethic that sets the framework for future management of the region’s public lands. This is a normative, value-based determination” the various stakeholders would have to affirm.35 Similarly, Bruce Goldstein emphasizes both science and ethics: “Before GYE can be managed as an ecosystem, there has to be widespread understanding of why new policies are required and what outcomes are anticipated, as well as the ethical reorientation that is required.” He describes the ethical reorientation in this way: “When maintenance of natural processes and linkages becomes the management goal, the ecosystem is valued as an object of respect and admiration, worth preserving.”36 For the entity termed GYE to become representational space, then, it was necessary to deal not only with scientific, economic, and political issues, but also with the foundational ideals and values that shaped the culture. Aware of the social, political, and ideological issues involved in such reorientations Susan Clark’s work on Greater Yellowstone focuses on the crucial role of decision-making processes in creating such radical transformations. She suggests that “In a functional sense, transboundary management is about transforming our decision-making activities”—which are usually geared toward strengthening boundaries, instead of letting them go. To participate in managing an ecosystem is, then, to adopt new policy concepts for coordinating among agencies—and indeed, “a whole new way of organizing . . . [human] relations with the natural world.” Further, ecosystem management “implies fundamental changes in the rights and responsibilities of individuals and corporations in the possession and use of land.” She lays out a model for decision-making processes that works at all these levels. The GYC provides good examples of how these processes can be applied. The fi rst step for Clark is that those who agree to sit around the table must begin with a “shared contextual map that identifies key trends in the region, explains reasons for them, and projects into the future.”37 The GYC’s plan “Greater Yellowstone Tomorrow” included three major initiatives which would be ways to accomplish this: profi ling the ecosystem in its various processes and components, “including the unique relationships of humans within the Ecosystem”; organizing a community outreach program both to provide information to and get input from the local communities;

206 Pilgrimage to the National Parks and formulating a blueprint for action.38 Clearly this was to be an ongoing process, rather than something done once and for all before decisionmaking begins. The next step for Clark is to identify the type of problem at hand—as ordinary, governance, or constitutive. The tendency is to approach all problems as “ordinary,” that is, from a management viewpoint that emphasizes technical fi xes. Clark describes the next level as governance problems in which decision-making processes are the issue. Many of the problems encountered in managing the GYE fall into this category because matters of values, not just technical facts are involved and the process must include this dimension. An example of this is bear management. Although attending to scientific study was essential for providing the context of the problem, Clark asserts that viewing the problem as an ordinary problem with a technical fi x made the human dimension invisible to land managers. 39 A study on determining required size of grizzly habitat reached a similar conclusion: of the “key factors, only one falls largely within the biological domain, while the others are determined by human values, behavior, densities, and distribution, so bear biology is secondary to human biology” and more effort needs to go to managing that side of the equation.40 Decisionmakers must be aware that humans are part of the process. There have been many successes working at these two levels. The Greater Yellowstone Coalition has worked at the ordinary level to overcome inertia caused by the deeper levels. For example, one of the legacies of the railroad days in the Gallatin National Forest was the checkerboard pattern of railroad lands. The Forest Service was not happy with this arrangement, but it took lobbying, a year’s work, and a land exchange and purchase to get a bill through Congress that consolidated the Gallatin Range in federal ownership. Although Congressional mandates have been opposed by many in the agencies, in this case it was successful. Also opposed by government agencies and also often necessary and successful in getting what should be ordinary problems resolved is litigation. One example led by the GYC involved endangered species in the Targhee National Forest. The lumber industry and senators from the area pressured the Forest Service to allow overcutting. The lawsuit forced the Service to make clear what cutting had been done, as well as giving them some protection from the pressure groups. What was discovered was “Despite a Forest Service commitment to leave 50 percent cover in this one area west of Yellowstone Park, they were down to 20 percent.”41 Both of these examples are “ordinary” problems in the sense that there is a technical fi x if people work together in good faith. However, they are also governance issues because they raise the question of who really has the power to make decisions—and who should. Another example from the GYC focuses on the governance level, although the result involved clarifying scientific or technical details as well. The issue was the threat of development to thermal features north

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of Yellowstone Park. The GYC was able to bring together regional entities that were involved, including the Church Universal and Triumphant and other private land owners outside the park, along with “academics, the state agencies, the fed, and everybody else.”42 Governance is the issue here because there is a commitment to involving all stakeholders, as well as needed scientific expertise. Decisions are not made at the top and imposed on those affected. Indeed, this may be why the Vision was not accepted. Although it was those at the top who condemned it, if it had been taken to the locals perhaps there would have been more grassroots support.43 The third level of problems, the constitutive, is the most complex and difficult to deal with. Constitutive issues involve changing or adjusting “the rules about how decisions should be made.” They often involve unstated assumptions of the culture and lie “buried deep in our public order.”44 Clearly there is a tangle of constitutive ideas at work in the GYE—as we have seen throughout this history of the parks insofar as they represent the developing story of U.S. culture. The western frontier values of individualism and conquest of nature are certainly part of the narrative of the national parks—even though restrained by reverence for primal American nature. Outside the parks, even though the same nature is there, the rules have been different; and conquest of nature in the name of progress has asserted itself as the constitutive rule. Keiter’s comment on the opposition to the GYCC’s Vision illustrates this: “local economic interests committed to the utilitarian tradition and long accustomed to unbridled access to public resources have resisted even modest changes in management philosophy.”45 Clark argues that “The dominant regional culture in the greater Yellowstone area rests on a myth of the promise of America and faith in the wisdom of its early settlers.” This includes belief in American exceptionalism, courage, optimism, and practicality. This myth unifies those who live in the region—yet the same narrative also asserts strong boundaries and discretionary authority, whether for individuals, corporations, or government agencies.46 According to Clark, if this is the shared narrative, and these the constitutive presuppositions, then this is the context within which discussion of particular issues— whether wolves or bison or bears—must begin. With the reintroduction of wolves we see both the adherence to the traditional values and the emergence of new ones. In the initial opposition in Congress to the idea of reintroducing wolves, “opponents characterized the wolf reintroduction plan as a diabolical plot to expand the park’s boundaries. Senator Alan Simpson (R-Wyoming) argued that ‘if you were really just staying with Yellowstone, it might not be quite so bad, but you’re not. You are using the concept of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem which has not been accepted well in the West because it goes clear out through various forests, and BLM, and the whole works. It just goes on and on and on.’” On the other hand, W.R. Lowry’s Repairing Paradise argues that through framing the wolf as a symbol, its image has changed

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for some from the “hated predator to noble ecosystem savior to a symbol of what had been lost in America.”47 Clearly this is still in the mode of mythic America, but now restoration of the ecosystem in the form of the wolf is identified with recapturing true American values. In 2011 the wolf debates continue, as wolves are removed from the endangered species list in Idaho and Montana by action of Congress in a rider attached to a budget bill, rather than through the usual Endangered Species Act procedures. The wolves in Wyoming were excluded from this delisting because—still indicating their opposition to this federal imposition—the state had not presented a plan for wolf management that the government would accept.48 GYC worked on wolf reintroduction for ten years under Executive Director Ed Lewis. The argument was not only historic restoration of what the ecosystem used to be, but also the scientific reasons why the present ecosystem needed wolves to function “naturally.” In Clark’s terms, the GYC focus on public education tried to begin with stakeholders where they were and work to enable them to come to view this restoration of a part of the ecosystem as “within their self-interest”—indicating a revisioning of constitutive values, if not their transformation. Current Executive Director Mike Clark works from the belief that people’s ideas (or constitutive values, in Clark’s terms), will not be changed by legislation, but only by being convinced that an intact ecosystem will be to their benefit rather than harming them. He sees the 2011 decision to delist wolves as a setback for the ecosystem which might have been averted had GYC realized sooner that the sporting community, which had supported wolf reintroduction earlier, needed to be persuaded that even though the elk had migrated from their usual hunting grounds because of wolf presence, it was possible for the hunters to follow the migration and fi nd abundant elk.49 What was needed was the recognition of more than an ordinary problem that could be fi xed by mapping the new areas where elk were plentiful. The return of hunters to the same camp through generations was a part of their mythic story that was not addressed. Clearly conflicting constitutive values continue to exist in the GYE, but the ecosystem model holds promise as “the concept has great power as a metaphorical device, rooted in scientific fact yet evocative enough to stir the hearts and minds of an American public now strongly committed to the preservationist ideal and its national parks heritage.”50 If this is true, the ecosystem model metaphorically becomes the foundation for a transformed narrative of the parks and the ideals and values they embody for the culture. Goldstein queries whether Yellowstone National Park “may be recreated in a new image as part of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem.”51 But the GYE can become a representational space only if the park and environmental advocates, on the one hand, and those outside these boundaries, on the other, can give up their claims to absolute boundaries and can adapt their constitutive values to affi rm a shared story.

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ALASKA: INHABITED WILDERNESS In the development of national parks in Alaska the mythic narrative took a dramatic shift as the possibilities of what could occur within the boundaries of a park were expanded to include local people’s use of the land for subsistence activities. What is striking is that this reimagining of what a national park might be was fi rmly grounded in the traditional narrative of the NPS. Alaska was seen as the ultimate virgin land, primitive America that was not only the last frontier, “which brands it as both an unspoiled wilderness for preservation and a land of vast untapped resources for industrial development”52 —but that could also be, perhaps, the “lasting frontier” because of its vastness and limited population. As the American West had done for earlier generations, Alaska held the promise of freedom, adventure, possibility, and the chance to strike it rich. This image was recurrent in both the creation of Alaskan national parks and in the way they continue to be marketed: the parks promise stark beauty, abundant wildlife, and the freedom to adventure in vast wildernesses without signage, footpaths, or camping sites. This discourse sits side by side with that of endless possibilities for economic success, whether through mining, trapping, or petroleum. It was in this confl icted setting that inhabited wilderness became a reality as a part of the narrative of the national park. The fi rst experiment in inhabited wilderness revolved around the “Sourdough.” The gold rush of 1896–1897 set the tone for the Alaskan frontier; and the prospector, or sourdough, became the frontier hero. However, there were differences from the frontier development in the American West. Because the buffalo had been brought close to extermination in the lower forty-eight, the Boone and Crockett Club was ready in the early twentieth century to argue for a preserve around game-rich Mt. McKinley. Instead of the frontier being the line of conquest of the advancing civilization, it would be the place of preservation—perhaps not unlike George Caitlin’s 1832 dream of a preserve across the middle of the U.S. for buffalo and Indians. Indians were not part of the twentiethcentury conservation-minded sportsmen’s dream, but they did include the prospector in their game preserve. Because the sourdough “symbolized the myth of the last frontier” he was given the privilege of hunting in the preserve; and, being the humble hero who had “the skill to survive in a wild uncivilized landscape,” he would not, it was assumed, abuse the privilege. 53 The expectation was that allowing subsistence while banning all other hunting would prevent market hunting and offer adequate protection to the game. Thus, McKinley National Park was established in 1917, allowing not only mining (as had been done in the organic acts of Yosemite, Rainier, Crater Lake, and Glacier as well), but also subsistence hunting by miners. 54 Not surprisingly, the miners did not succeed in playing their contradictory roles of the “responsible conservationist” and the romanticized “cultural relic of the frontier.”55 Also, market hunters under

210 Pilgrimage to the National Parks the guise of miners began to decimate the game; and in 1928 hunting was outlawed. Instead of the experimental model of an inhabited frontier park, Mt. McKinley turned to focus on the traditional job of increasing tourism by providing accommodations that were far from primitive. Although the idea of inhabited wilderness had not lasted long in Mt. McKinley, the realities of the Alaskan natural and cultural landscape made it a requirement for future development of Alaska public lands. Alaskan native peoples were in a distinctively different position from those in the lower forty-eight when lands were fi rst set aside for national parks. “Only in Alaska did the federal government establish national parklands (Mount McKinley in 1917, Katmai in 1918, Glacier Bay in 1925) before extinguishing aboriginal title.” This enabled Tlingit and Haida Indians to sue when the government claimed they had no possessory rights in Glacier Bay National Monument. When scientists came into Glacier Bay to study the primary succession of soil and plants that was occurring following deglaciation, they paid little attention to the natives of Hoonah “whose aboriginal territory and contemporary hunting and fi shing grounds extended the full length of Glacier Bay.” Even though the scientists knew that native peoples used the resources of the area, they “dismissed the natives’ role in the ecology of Glacier Bay. . . . Noting the ‘undisturbed condition of the coastal forest and regenerative plant growth around Glacier Bay,’ the [American Association for the Advancement of Science] declared that the most suitable purpose for this land was that it be ‘permanently preserved in an absolutely natural condition’”; and therefore there should be, for example, no seal hunting by the Haidas. Working from the mythic narrative of the pristine land, the scientists had no way of “fitting native use of the area into their frame of reference” or of acknowledging that the native peoples had been hunting in the Bay before deglaciation even began, rather than being intruders in a pure “nature.”56 The U.S. Court of Claims in Tlingit and Haida Indians of Alaska v. United States found in favor of the Haida in Glacier Bay and set a precedent for the land claims that would follow. The conclusions to the Tlingit and Haida court case in 1968 along with the growing Alaskan native rights movement led to agreement by all parties that native land claims had to be settled before decisions were made on dispersal of Alaskan lands. The urgency of the situation was heightened by petroleum development on the North Slope, with both natives and government aware of the need for conservation. The lands that were being considered for protected area status were “hinterlands”—areas “remote and unsettled” in which the Park Service had to “adapt to a social environment which [was] different from that in which . . . parks and reserves have traditionally evolved.”57 Part of this adaptation was necessary because the livelihood of people in these areas depended on hunting and fishing. Thus, unlike in the lower forty-eight where native peoples had been removed to reservations before most parks were established, a crucial issue in the

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distribution of Alaskan land involved the rights of native peoples. There is little question that this was primarily a political decision. For the federal government to succeed in setting aside extensive protected lands, a goal resisted by many Alaskan citizens, an alliance with both conservationists and native peoples was required. 58 What the native peoples wanted was the right to continue their subsistence use of the resources in what would now be park lands. Thus, the very thorny issue of what subsistence use would mean and how it would fit with the traditional idea of the national park had to be addressed. The Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA) of 1971 “extinguished all aboriginal title to lands and submerged lands and all aboriginal hunting and fishing rights” in exchange for monetary compensation to “corporations” of native peoples which would also select the lands allowed under the settlement.59 However, because the land allotments clearly did not meet subsistence needs, there was a legislative recognition that subsistence would have to be allowed on other public lands. Only with the “Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act” (ANILCA) in 1980 were the guarantees for subsistence laid out in some detail. Title VIII stated: The continuation of the opportunity for subsistence uses by rural residents of Alaska . . . is essential to Native physical, economic, traditional, and cultural existence and to non-Native physical, economic, traditional, and social existence.60 The inclusion of all rural people avoided discrimination on the basis of race,61 while the use of the term “cultural” for native peoples acknowledged their special position as a people in relation to the land. The affi rmation of subsistence rights thus became more than economic, and included the recognition that these practices were necessary to the preservation of native “culture” or “tradition.” Further, Title VIII gave priority to subsistence hunting on all the public lands of Alaska, which would, if game were not plentiful, limit other hunting on lands where it was normally allowed, creating possible tensions between urban and rural people. Title VIII also stated that “The Secretary shall ensure that rural residents engaged in subsistence uses shall have reasonable access to subsistence resources on the public lands,” specifying snowmobile and motorboat use, even in areas where normally prohibited (i.e. wilderness areas), and “other means of surface transportation traditionally employed for such purposes by local residents.” All of this, according to the policy statement in Title VIII, was to cause the least adverse effects on those who had lived off the land before the new rules came in—as long as use was “consistent with sound management principles, and the conservation of healthy populations of fish and wildlife” and “with management of fish and wildlife in accordance with recognized scientific principles and the purposes for each unit.” Operating under these statements “the NPS would maintain that in Alaska, the nation’s ‘last

212 Pilgrimage to the National Parks frontier,’ subsistence hunting could be compatible with wilderness preservation and the national park idea.”62 Not surprisingly, these new policies were not warmly received by all, including both the urbanites (including native urban people) who were denied certain hunting rights rural people received and some environmentalists and Park Service personnel who could not imagine hunting to be a legitimate activity in a national park. Others accepted subsistence but saw it as a temporary transition for native people from a traditional to a modern society. The focal point for debates around the issue was what exactly subsistence was and what were “traditional” means of engaging in it. The Act defi nes “subsistence uses” as “the customary and traditional uses by rural Alaska residents of wild renewable resources.” Theodore Catton in Inhabited Wilderness says that the assumption behind the idea of subsistence is “that it is primal, compared with other kinds of resource use, and therefore ought to be given priority.” He goes on to distinguish between subsistence and what he calls “aboriginal hunting and fishing” because subsistence takes place in a context that includes other kinds of game-taking and can involve the use of implements that have evolved with the culture’s exposure to modern hunting. So subsistence is “traditional and customary,” but not “aboriginal”; primal, but with the use of modern technology. Catton underlines his point by noting the difference between George Catlin’s imagined nation’s park containing buffalo and Plains Indians and the Alaska model is that the latter “made no pretense about preserving an aboriginal way of life. The very term ‘subsistence use’ recognized that the hunting and gathering done by contemporary Alaska natives was a complex blend of the traditional and the modern. Yet,” he acknowledges, “the romantic appeal of Catlin’s vision did not lie far beneath the surface of the legal language set forth in ANILCA.”63 The tendency to romanticize native people and the confl icts it creates with actual cultures is well-portrayed in the story of the Nunamiuts who became the only group actually to inhabit a national park, as their village of Anaktuvuk Pass became part of Gates of the Arctic National Park. As Theodore Catton puts it, anthropologists and Park Service planners who came across the Nunamiuts in the 1940s thought they were discovering a primitive people who had been untouched by Euro-American civilization; and they made the Nunamiuts their poster child in the 1960s for inhabitants of American primal wilderness. In actuality, the Nunamiuts had a complicated modern history that began with them as a remnant of inland Eskimo culture whose subsistence revolved around caribou hunting. With both economic and ecological changes at the end of the nineteenth century, the group began to spend more time on the coast, finally abandoning their inland existence entirely and taking on the material goods, education, language (English), and religion (Christianity) of the coastal culture, dominated fi rst by whaling and then trade, particularly fur. Again for economic and ecological reasons in the 1930s they began to return periodically to the

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mountains and after 1939 gave up their coastal existence, although not all they had gathered and learned there. A bush pilot who came across them in 1943, for example, was given a grocery list and asked to bring supplies for them from the Northern Commercial Company store in Fairbanks, where they had credit, based on the deposit of furs. At his suggestion they moved to Anaktuvuk Pass, where he could provide better air service, and helped them establish other services, such as a school. It was here that they were “discovered” by anthropologists and labeled “authentic aboriginals.” Those who admired them as primitive people were somewhat disturbed by their use of English, apparent devotion to Christianity, and their radios on which they listened to everything from the Voice of America to rock and roll. Or, more often, these things remained invisible to Euro-American eyes that were seeking “primitives;” and the people were inaccurately described as living in primal wilderness with no connection to nonnative culture. Catton claims the Nunamiut did not try to correct this misperception, but instead “sought refuge in this white man’s wilderness. They addressed themselves directly to the romantic primitivism of their white admirers. Initially they used their primitive image to protect their cultural autonomy. Later they used it to defend their hunting way of life.”64 Within this context and the understanding that these primordial people could coexist peaceably with “wilderness,” Anaktuvuk Village became part of Gates of the Arctic when the Park was established in 1980. To affi rm subsistence hunting and habitation within national parks, is clearly a radical change in the national park narrative, yet there is also a continuation of the traditional narrative of primal America. What is different is the inclusion of the usually invisible native peoples in the story—and not just as part of the display, as in the establishment of Glacier and Grand Canyon, for example. But, as we have seen, in accepting them as part of the untouched wilderness there was the tendency to romanticize them and force them to continue to play the primal role, rather than acknowledging that, as with all cultures, native cultures evolve. Just as the effort to create and maintain the parks as they were “fi rst visited by the white man” has given way to the acceptance that nature evolves, so there has been a gradual parallel understanding of native cultures. Although subsistence seems a departure from the traditional national park, Frank Norris opens his history of Alaska subsistence by noting that even in the days of the earliest parks subsistence activities such as fishing or collecting were sometimes allowed, whether through legal mandates or informally. Beginning in the 1960s this trend increased, sometimes including alternative uses in newly established parks. For example, in Badlands National Park, Ogalala Sioux can hunt in the new South Unit; in Point Reyes National Seashore, Hispanics can pick berries; and in Voyageurs National Park, Ojibwe can harvest wild rice and pick berries. Indeed, Norris says that although data is hard to come by, “it appears that a general trend has emerged in recent years to . . . allow subsistence activities by local

214 Pilgrimage to the National Parks residents, so long as that activity is compatible with overall park goals.”65 As was noted earlier in this chapter, in the 1970s the Havasupai were granted rights by the NPS for nonconforming traditional uses of Grand Canyon National Park land. Perhaps the most significant development in the lower forty eight was the Timbisha Shoshone Homeland Act of 2000 which transferred trust lands to the tribe, including land at Furnace Creek, which is part of Death Valley National Park. “In addition, the act designated special use areas in which tribal members are authorized to pursue low-impact, ecologically sustainable, traditional practices under a management plan mutually agreed upon by the Tribe and the National Park Service (NPS).”66 In addition to the Timbisha Shoshone being granted land rights in a national park, the significance of this process lay in the fact that it was mutually negotiated. As Philip Burnham reports, “The Park Service initially came to the table prepared to do nothing more than listen; real dialogue . . . didn’t begin until the bureau agreed to negotiate with the tribe as equals, not merely consult with them.”67 These alternative uses of park lands for the most part have remained under the radar because they do not fit the traditional narrative of national parks and that traditional narrative has resisted change. While this may be true in Alaska as well, alternative use is so prevalent (including people inhabiting parks!) that it is likely to have an impact on the traditional narrative. The change may be seen in the process by which the National Park Service moved, if slowly, to incorporate subsistence into the national park narrative. Evolution within the narrative may be seen by using Clark’s structure for analyzing policy decisions seen in the discussion of the GYE. If, as she said in relation to Yellowstone, learning how to make policy decisions within the ecosystem model is “a whole new way of organizing [human] relations with the natural world,” then learning how to make policy decisions in relation to inhabited wilderness can be seen as a new way of organizing human relations with people in the natural world. From one angle, Clark’s process of working from the more superficial technical problems through governance issues to the foundational constitutive issues is different in Alaska, where it was clear from the fi rst that the issue of how to divide and use the land in this new state required more than a technical solution. ANCSA and ANILCA provided the framework of a radically new governance system for making decisions about federal and native lands, and these laws might be seen as the shared contextual map. The new decision-making structure included Subsistence Regional Councils (SRCs), which were to make the initial recommendations for subsistence hunting policies in their individual regions, with the structure giving them a great deal of latitude in what they could recommend. Although responses were often slow from Interior and there was not always agreement between the SRCs and the government, nonetheless, a grassroots, flexible decision-making process was on the books. The whole procedure was a

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radical change for the Park Service, whose administrative history shows a reluctance to include outsiders in decision-making; and it is not surprising that not everyone was immediately on board. Norris acknowledges that, even though the agency’s long-term goal was not to eliminate subsistence, “the NPS’s perceived intransigence on various subsistence policy matters implicitly suggested that the agency had little interest in either supporting or encouraging subsistence uses.” This began to change in 1992 with a conference involving those who worked on subsistence issues at different levels. Those working in the field had a more positive attitude toward subsistence than those at a distance and they were frustrated by the lack of supportive policies. Progress fi nally began to be made in 1996 when, as a result of a system-wide NPS reorganization, the subsistence division was eliminated and its personnel put into divisions based on discipline. Jon Jarvis, then Superintendent of Wrangell-St. Elias and later Director of the NPS, who headed the team that put the new plan in place, called it a “‘new paradigm.’”68 Continuing flexibility and willingness to adjust decisionmaking processes enabled the SRCs and NPS to work together in a more productive manner as new constitutive values began to be shared. Anaktuvuk Village provides another example of changes at the governance level that also helped solve problems at the technical and constitutive levels. Snowmobile use had been specified by Title VIII as one form of access that was acceptable for subsistence hunting if it was “traditionally employed.” Although there were some arguments over what “traditional” meant,—some said after World War II; others said any time before the park was established (which fit the NPS policy of allowing nonconforming preexisting uses in protected areas)—the form of access was not questioned. What was not mentioned in the Act, however, was the use of all-terrain vehicles (ATVs), which the Nunamiut (as well as other native groups) claimed was essential for subsistence hunting. The Park Service put a ban on ATV use when Gates of the Arctic National Park was established in 1980, saying “the machines were disturbing the tundra and eroding wilderness values.”69 There were clearly governance issues at play here—who would make these decisions? And constitutive issues—even though we have allowed snowmobiles, do either they or ATVs really fit with our defi nition of wilderness values? And technical issues—is it not clear that ATVs have a more destructive impact on the landscape than snowmobiles do? We again see flexibility in the policy-making process as the Nunamiut and Park Service entered into negotiations in the late 1980s. A land exchange became law in the 1996 Omnibus Parks and Public Lands Bill that consolidated Nunamiut land, where ATVs could be used, and wilderness areas, where they could not. This avoided the potentially agreement-breaking issue of whether they could be considered “traditional” (which would require that they be permitted ) and allowed the Park Service to enable Nunamiut subsistence hunting while preserving their understanding of what can and cannot happen in the wilderness area of a national park.

216 Pilgrimage to the National Parks In both of these examples, the satisfactory resolutions might be a result of more than a change at the governance level. By 1996 changes may have been developing at the constitutive level as inhabited wilderness began to take on power as a representational space. There is no question that deep changes had to occur for this to happen. At the constitutive level the values of the western frontier were even more strongly at work than in Greater Yellowstone, for Alaska was in fact still a frontier in many ways and many of the people who moved there saw themselves as the fi rst settlers. Clearly, the incorporation of subsistence use into the parks and, in particular, the inclusion of the Anaktuvuk Village as an inholding in Gates of the Arctic appeared to present a challenge to the traditional values—and yet the inclusion occurred. The question is whether subsistence was primarily a political compromise that, it was hoped, would naturally fall away as more opportunities were provided for a cash economy, or if it was actually seen as a positive addition to the mission of these national parks. The latter would indicate a change in constitutive values. Generally, inholdings are undesirable: privately owned lands in areas that become national parks need to be bought out. In this case, it would seem the inholding is affi rmed as a part of the mission of the park, along with the unique co-management plan between the Nunamiuts and NPS. Another set of constitutive values—those of native people—also comes into play in this discussion. One of the ironies built into this Alaskan protected lands experiment is that ANCSA established a corporate structure in which land and money would be held and to which, either on a regional or village level, native peoples would belong. A few years later, ANILCA guaranteed subsistence rights to these same people who were now part of corporate America. Thomas F. Thornton notes in a perceptive discussion of the subject that this seeming bifurcation of identity is not without tension within native communities. But he sees a “balance between capitalist corporate values and Native communal values” being negotiated. For example, all of the regional corporations include in their mission statements some reference to the preservation of their cultures and traditions.70 The Arctic Slope Regional Corporation, for example, includes on its web page under “About Us” a picture of a traditional Eskimo practice along with this text: Iñupiaq values guide us in actively managing our businesses, lands, resources, and business relationships. . . . Our core values are Sharing, Family, Knowledge of Language, Hunting Traditions, Respect for Nature, Humility, Compassion, Resolution of Conflict, Respect for our elders and one another, Cooperation, Spirituality, and Humor.71 What is described is a cultural-socio-economic model which could enable native peoples to develop new constitutive values that maintain their own—evolving—traditional culture, rather than either being assimilated

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into mainstream culture or isolated from it. It might also provide a model that bridges the boundary between the two economic realms. A similar example is seen with the Yupiks, as they were trying to negotiate subsistence rights. A publication in 1974, A Report on Subsistence and the Conservation of the Yupik Lifestyle, compiled by Yupktak Bista, an organization of the Yupik Eskimos of the Kuskokwim-Yukon delta region raised the question, “Does one way of life have to die, so that another can live?” The intention of the report was to educate federal officials on the practice of subsistence and its centrality to the culture, along with the fact that they could imagine including it with the corporate economy in which they were now also engaged. The argument was that one does not have to choose between traditional and modern culture, but can develop a mode that incorporates them both.72 Thus, both the NPS and the native cultures were—and are—engaged in the exploration of an expansion of constitutive values that may suggest permeable boundaries between the worlds of nature and labor as well as between the two cultures.

REIMAGINING NATURE AND CULTURE The importance of human culture in the parks, as we saw in Alaska, is becoming part of the mythic narrative, as is the importance of humans as part of the natural ecosystem, as we saw in the GYE. We see this internationally as the category of “protected lands” is widely used, expanding the possible forms such lands can take. These models, which emphasize the human presence in the landscape, while not neglecting protection of natural areas, argue that both must be considered in the successful and ongoing sustainability of protected lands. David Harmon uses the term “biocultural diversity” to describe the mutual enhancement of nature and culture, stressing both must be preserved.73 We will look at these ideas at work in biosphere reserves, national heritage areas, and in the incorporation of more than Euro-Americans into the narrative of the national parks. Ecologist Eric Higgs offers a model that requires the consideration and involvement of the human in any natural restoration project. He prefers the term “restoration” to “conservation” because it acknowledges the human involvement in the enterprise. He says the basics of restoration include historical integrity and ecological integrity, both of which involve cultural understandings and valuations as well as historical and scientific knowledge. An additional necessary element is “focal restoration,” which requires an involved community focusing on the project. This, he says, “creates a stronger relationship between people and natural process, a bond reinforced by communal experience.” Only with this new relationship with nature and with community will people live with nature in a way that enables the restoration to succeed. Finally, “wild design” must be included, which emphasizes both that human intention and values are always involved in a

218 Pilgrimage to the National Parks restoration process (design) and that the ecological processes will always have their (wild) say.74 A model for managing protected lands, including national parks, that tries to integrate the preservation of both nature and culture and integrate humans in the processes of the ecosystem is the 1968 UNESCO “Man and the Biosphere” (MAB) program. The biosphere is defi ned as “that veneer of our Earth’s crust, waters and atmosphere that supports life. It reaches from the deepest ocean floor 12 miles upward to the tops of the highest mountains.”75 MAB “is based on the concept that it is possible to achieve a sustainable balance between the conservation of biological diversity, economic development, and maintenance of associated cultural values.”76 A Biosphere Reserve includes a Core Area with minimal disturbance for preservation and monitoring; a Buffer Zone surrounding the core area which would allow for experimental research, educational activities, and some forms of public recreation; and a Transition Area “where concepts developed in the reserve are applied to achieve sustainable balances between the use of natural resources to meet human needs and their conservation for the future of the entire region.” Development that is socioculturally and ecologically sustainable would be cooperatively managed by biosphere reserve stakeholders, that is, federal agencies, scientists, and local citizens.77 Although this model clearly has connections to the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem concept, here there is a deliberate effort to bring core (wilderness) values into continuity with productive human activities. This model does not deny the differences between the areas or the necessity of the boundaries that separate them. Core areas—minimally disturbed lands— are special places where nature is and must be treated differently from the other areas both for the “intangible values” that wilderness provides and for a scientific baseline to compare to noncore areas.78 Nonetheless, rather than isolating the core area as an island, it is seen to be in continuity with the expanding concentric circles that make up the other areas. In the U.S. version of the program, this continuity is seldom found. More often, different areas are designated as fulfi lling only one part of the three-part structure. For example, when Yellowstone was designated a part of MAB in 1976, only what lay within Park boundaries was designated as a protected (core) area, rather than including the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem and developing the whole model. “Biosphere Reserve Clusters” are a U.S. attempt to coordinate separate areas. The Chihuahuan Desert Biosphere Reserve includes Big Bend National Park in Texas as the Core area; the Agricultural Research Service’s La Jornada Experimental Range in New Mexico as the Buffer area for long-term research and field application; and Mapimi, located in the Mexican states of Chihuahua, Coahuila, and Durango as the transition area. However, Mapimi also includes core and buffer zones “and is managed cooperatively by scientists, policy makers, landowners, and ejidatarios” (nonlandowning farmers who work the

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land communally) and “more comprehensively integrates Biosphere Reserve functions than the US reserves.”79 At a symposium on Biosphere Reserves in 1987 a speaker argued, “Biosphere reserves offer a ‘humanistic’ approach to nature conservation in a manner such that plants and animals are not a priori considered more important than man. On the contrary, man is considered as a positive, key factor in the maintenance of a given biosphere reserve; in return man can learn how to live in harmony with his cultural and natural environment.”80 This emphasis on how humans can be changed through their interactions with nature is part of a discourse that tries to avoid the “dualism of simple village life in harmony with nature and complex competitive urban life in confl ict with nature.”81 David Harmon suggests discarding terms like traditional, native, and indigenous—all of which “make sense only in comparison with some unnamed (and unspecified) ‘mainstream’ culture.” He says those who manage protected areas too often presume that only those listed above live in harmony with their immediate environment. “The possibility that modern cultures could just as appropriately live in harmony with the environment—and therefore could just as appropriately remain as residents of protected areas—is ignored.82 As we saw in the discussion of Alaskan subsistence, the term hinterlands, describing traditional people cut off from modern society, was inadequate. Alaskan natives, involved with the messy mix of corporations and subsistence, offer a model that those on the modern side might also explore—as Raymond Dasmann suggests, a “future primitive.” He envisions a new balance between humans and nature where there is a “sense of belonging to the natural world, being part of nature.”83 Some of the Biosphere Reserve advocates take a similar tack as J.R. Engel says in “The Symbolic and Ethical Dimensions of the Biosphere Reserve Concept,” “the reserves are potentially about the work of creating a new kind of sacred space in which human beings deliberately take moral responsibility for the co-evolution of our species and Earth.”84 Although the national parks are not engaged in the full dimensions of the Biosphere Reserve program, the basic philosophy resonates with some of the new programs the parks are initiating or supporting. One “extraboundary” program that fully includes nature and culture is National Heritage Areas (NHA), which was fi rst designated by Congress at the end of the twentieth century. The NPS is involved in supporting their development, both administratively and fi nancially, although the lands are not owned by the Park Service. They enable the NPS to extend the range of protected areas and to make them available to more people, as well as preserving the heritage of a broader range of Americans. NHAs are defi ned as “places where natural, cultural, and historic resources combine to form a cohesive, nationally important landscape.” They are lived-in landscapes where communities collaborate with the NHA “to determine how to make heritage relevant to local interests and needs.” Because the places are lived in, they encourage preservation projects that

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incorporate the human and natural together. They also address local interests, which could be cultural, natural, or economic and thus engage the local community in a sustainable preservation project. By supporting “historic preservation, natural resource conservation, recreation, heritage tourism, and educational projects,” with members of the community being the tourist guides, they try to overcome the exoticism of many tourism endeavors. Finally, “NHAs tell nationally important stories that celebrate our nation’s diverse heritage,” thus enlarging the number and range of people whose stories are shared as part of the nation’s heritage.85 The emphasis on the diversity of the stories that can be told through NHAs brings us to a third way boundaries between nature and culture are changing: the symbolic boundaries of race and ethnicity that have made the national parks largely playgrounds for middle-class Euro-Americans are breaking down. Part of the reason for this exclusiveness relates to the traditional narrative that has driven national parks. If indeed it is the narrative that draws people to the parks as sacred sites and if the story builds upon nature as Eden, the pristine garden set apart as a refuge from the woes of civilization, those who do not share this mythic story of nature and civilization will not be drawn to the parks. Sociologist and human ecologist Joseph W. Meeker points out the double disconnect between African Americans and Native Americans and the national park narrative. On the one hand, he argues, both groups, in their traditional life, did not live with the division between nature and culture that is foundational for the national park story. He says, referring to Euro- Americans, “The need to protect nature from human activities is thus strongest in those cultures where humans look upon themselves as separate from natural life, and where they see that civilization is dangerous to the natural settings they need for spiritual relief.” This approach is congruent with the Garden of Eden origin myth. African American or Native American traditions, on the other hand, have traditional myths that assume “the civilized structures of human life are perfectly compatible with systems of nature, and both emphasize that the adaptation of human affairs to natural processes is one of the essential responsibilities of civilization.”86 On the other hand, Meeker says, both these groups have American experiences of nature that lead them away from either nature in general or national parks in particular. American land is associated for African Americans with the “source of misery and humiliation.” Native Americans were “displayed and exploited” in the national parks. Meeker’s conclusion is that national parks will never satisfy the “emotional needs” of people of color as they do for Euro-Americans. Therefore, the mythology of the national parks should be left behind and they should be valued for the “integrity of the wilderness ecosystems which are protected with them.”87 The suggestion of this book is that rather than discarding the mythic narrative and its ability to speak to the “emotional needs,” or perhaps more accurately, to

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provide a narrative of meaning and value for the community, transformation of the narrative is possible and desirable and is actually taking place. This is not to assume that all African Americans or all Native Americans share the same mythic stories or that those stories dominate as members of both groups share in the values of the larger American culture. However, they are roots that may help to explain why low numbers of these groups visit the parks. Dudley Edmondson’s Black and Brown Faces in America’s Wild Places both confi rms and denies this as he interviews and tells the stories of people of color who are actively involved with the American outdoors, many of them with the Park Service or Forest Service. African American Shelton Johnson, who features prominently in the Ken Burns film, affi rms an ancestral connection to nature, as well as a universal spirituality he experiences in nature. Cheryl Armstrong, President and CEO of the James P. Beckwourth Mountain Club in Denver, which brings youth of color into the outdoors, as well as educating people about the role of people of color in the West, affi rms that “people of color, whether they are Black, Latino or American Indian, have always had a deep connection to the land. It is part of their culture.” On the other hand, Bill Gwaltney, with both African American and Native American ancestry, focuses more on the shared American culture, as he says what is important is “that we connect all Americans to their natural, cultural and outdoor heritage . . . it is part of what comes with the package of being an American. He also asserts that “All the real rhythms that exist in the world are all based on nature” which people can connect with, whatever their form of spirituality is. A shared message from the interviewees is that they understand why many people of color either avoid or are not drawn to the parks—all of them carry the legacy (and sometimes present reality) of racism in America.88 A narrative of the national parks that tells of the connections of people of color with both the history and nature of America will not only allow the parks to speak to a more diverse set of Americans, but will also transform the narrative for all Americans, making it a more inclusive American story. The Ken Burns PBS fi lm, “The National Parks: America’s Best Idea” is at its best as it tells the story of a wide range of racial and ethnic groups and their connections, both past and present, to the national parks. Reflecting a relatively recent addition to the traditional narrative, the series makes the forced eviction of native peoples a part of the history of the parks. It also weaves in the voices of Native Americans, African Americans, Asians, and Hispanics either in the history of the parks or interviews of contemporary people (or both). For example, the emphasis on the Hispanic heritage of park scientist George Melendez Wright alters the traditional narrative by highlighting not only this early scientific achievement, but also the early and important role of Hispanic Americans in the NPS. In the Special Features included with the DVD version of the fi lm, these vignettes are collected together and enlarged upon which makes a very strong story of American pluralism. For example, in the special feature

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“Contemporary Stories,” we see Ranger Shelton Johnson (African American) presenting to park visitors a historic reenactment of the Buffalo Soldiers who served as rangers in Yosemite, a piece of Yosemite history that was in the past not considered an important part of interpretation. Another “Contemporary Story” features Superintendent Gerard Baker (American Indian) interpreting democracy at Mt. Rushmore and noting that when he came as Superintendent he realized what was missing was the history of the people who had inhabited the Black Hills—and still do today. So the American Indian story has become a part of interpretation at Mt. Rushmore. Although the fi lm tries to bring together nature and history, one part of the history of the nature parks that is absent is the story of the native peoples who were there throughout the history of the parks—whether as “exhibits” (Glacier and Grand Canyon, e.g.), as workers and inhabitants (Supai Camp on the South Rim and Indian Camp in Yosemite, e.g.), or contenders for land (the Blackfeet Confederation in Glacier and the Havasupai in Grand Canyon, e.g). In fact, American Indian cultures are part of the history of every park—but this story cannot be incorporated as long as the dream of an unpeopled, untouched America awaiting the arrival of the Europeans controls the mythic narrative.89 As Gerard Baker says, quite pointedly in an interview in the book version, which is not included in the fi lm: If you go into a national park, you have stories—about the trees and about the grasses, for example, and about the animals and about the water and about all that. You also have a human story. And the human story did not start when national parks came in. We need to make sure that people who visit those parks understand that there was somebody here before them. That there was somebody here before the national park and this is how they used that land.90 By bridging nature and culture, the national park narrative is able to reveal more stories in the American landscape and affi rm the value of preserving them as well as the landscape. David Harmon argues for integrating “Natural and Cultural Heritage Conservation.” “On a global scale the primary importance of biocultural diversity is that it is the fundamental expression of the variety upon which all life is founded.” Working from this concept, which brings together nature and culture, people from a variety of disciplines—nature conservationists, social scientists, and humanists— can come together in a shared ethic, which is based on “the paramount importance of diversity and the processes that create it.”91 This affi rmation of the value of cultural and biological diversity reaffirms the various park and extrapark projects that would include nature and culture together in the narrative of the national parks. To return to an earlier question of whether it is possible for the parks to serve as pilgrimage sites if they are not bounded, unchanging spaces, it becomes clear that it is possible, indeed inevitable given these new values,

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to have a sacred site that is not eternally unchanging and that has permeable boundaries. If parks are not islands but are interconnected with their larger ecosystems and if these ecosystems include humans so nature and culture cannot be set apart, and if diversity is affi rmed in both nature and culture, then the question is whether the mythic national park narratives can be transformed to tell this story and express these values.

Epilogue Pilgrimage and the Future of the National Parks

A place has the power to embody the values and beliefs of a culture and to serve as a pilgrimage site only if it speaks to the deepest understanding of the nature of reality that is woven through the culture. Sometimes such a sacred place holds ideals that are still circulating, but no longer adequately articulate the contemporary experiences of the culture. Cultures often cling to a story that has not evolved to incorporate the present because it feels safe, if not life-giving. Sometimes a sacred place plays the prophet in moving a culture into embracing a new vision, one that is challenging and risky because the new paradigm it embodies is not yet fully incorporated into the narrative that makes sense of and unifies the culture, and indeed may clash with the more comfortable story that made sense in the past. As we saw early on, pilgrimage sites are never static places and their narratives never unchallenged or unchanging. Just because they do embody the values and beliefs of living, dynamic cultures, there will always be contestation and change, which the sites must reflect. The national parks seem to be involved in just such a moment of transformation, reflecting a change in paradigm U.S. American culture is experiencing.1 One of the foundations for a culture’s narrative is the fundamental understanding of the relation between humans and nature. This story, both in and outside the parks, is being shaped by new perspectives offered by ecological sciences, which challenge the long-standing mechanistic view of nature along with the dichotomous separation of human culture and the natural world. The old view reinforced the American story of a pristine new world that could be preserved unchanged in the national parks and a wilderness where people only visited. These same parks can now offer a place where an alternative view of humans and nature can be explored, although such explorations always involve disruption and create gaps as the former vision collides with a new way of making sense of the experience of meaning and value in the world. Another foundation of a culture’s narrative is its understanding of human to human relations, of who is included in the narrative of America’s land and who is an outsider, who is other. A new part of the story related to the land is the evolving recognition of how humans were shaping

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and being shaped by the land of America “before the coming of the white man,” which disrupts the Anglo-American notion of unpeopled wilderness as the context for their entry into the New World and thereby changes that narrative—which again is not necessarily easy or comfortable. Part of the way it changes the narrative is by revealing there is more than one narrative of America. This coincides with a growing awareness of the reality and importance of the stories of Americans beyond Euro-Americans. “Changing demographics” means that the stories of others must be acknowledged, as well as recognizing that other stories were there from the fi rst. Part of the new narrative that is being explored in national parks is that these many stories must be included and are important parts of the whole. There is no grand narrative, but many narratives, often in confl ict, and involving both people and nature, that make up the story of the United States which the parks, as pilgrimage sites, attempt to tell. These shifts in narrative, whether in the foundational understanding of humans and nature or in the way Americans understand and live out their democracy, are never easy. But they are creative moments in a culture’s history when, in the midst of a gap between the old and new paradigms, new narratives can take shape. Pilgrims to national parks in this period of transformation, might experience a disconnect—“a gap,” as Kathleen Stewart puts it, “in the myth of the gist of things.”2 She suggests this gap may be found in “a space on the side of the road,” that is, a nonhomogenizing space where there is room to maneuver and try out ways of being in the world that do not fit whatever narrative one lives in. Perhaps surprisingly, national parks may be becoming just such places.

CHANGE IN PARADISE William C. Tweed, retired as Chief Naturalist at Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks in 2006 after more than thirty years with the Park Service, experiences the clash of old and new stories as he refl ects on the history and future of the national parks during his two hundred forty mile meditative hike from Tuolumne Meadows in Yosemite National Park to Crescent Meadow in Sequoia National Park, which he labels a pilgrimage. Was I really making a sacred journey? The more I thought about it, the more the idea worked. For many Americans, national parks and wilderness areas are sacred. The ideas that support them possess the power and importance of religion. I am going into the wilderness to reconsider those ideas and seek perspective. In that regard, at least, I am a pilgrim. As he observes and experiences the landscape, he reflects on the history and vision of the National Park Service. He comes across arrowheads and notes

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the wilderness was not without human occupation before Euro-American settlement. He knows increased temperatures are already affecting some high-altitude animals like pica; and some trees will need to migrate to higher ground. He also realizes that the challenges of climate change “constitute only half the puzzle. Societal and demographic changes also threaten national parks in fundamental ways.”3 The difficult conclusion he comes to is that the version of the National Park Idea that has guided his own career is no longer viable in the current biological and cultural contexts. His book is presented as a warning that unless the NPS reexamines its basic premises (or in our terms, its mythic narrative), the national parks will not survive. The traditional story of the sacred lands no longer describes the relation of humans and nature in a way that makes sense in our changing world. If a pilgrimage site is to embody the ideals and values of a culture, it must integrate the spiritual and the scientific, the way we understand the realities of nature and our place in it. In this fi nal chapter we will imagine what pilgrimage to the national parks might be, given new understandings of ecological science that move from the metaphors of balance and equilibrium to flux and dynamic interaction, the encroaching and presumably inevitable results of climate change, and changing U.S. demographics—and the response that is envisioned in the National Parks Second Century Commission report, “Advancing the National Park Idea.” We will look at how these changing ideas are being lived out in the experience of pilgrimage to the national parks.

THE DYNAMICS OF CHANGE Echoing statements we heard in the previous chapter, Tweed says, “The concept that a ‘fence of law’ can be erected around a portion of an ecosystem and that the area contained within that hypothetical fence can be maintained forever . . . unimpaired . . . can no longer be defended.”4 The history he tells is also a familiar one: At fi rst it was assumed that protection of park resources—basically from fi re and predators, was all that was required to “maintain unimpaired.” Although the voices of scientists offered alternative modes, even before there was extensive knowledge of ecology, they were generally ignored because according to the National Park Idea, nature could take care of itself. The next stage worked with the scientific understanding that, if not disturbed, natural processes would perpetuate themselves indefi nitely. Fitting very nicely with the mythic story of a pristine America that could be preserved unchanged, “the science of the time reflected the assumption that natural, wild ecosystems tended to be homeostatic.”5 Without human disturbance they would develop into a stable climax community (much like Eden, no doubt). Thus, the mandate of the parks was to preserve natural processes. However, “Few ecologists still argue that natural processes will lead reliably to natural results in a

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world where anthropogenic climate change, pollution, and habitat fragmentation have changed the ecological operating rules.”6 What is needed is a paradigm change. “Yet, even today both the Virgin Continent and natural processes/natural results doctrines remain deeply embedded within the service’s collective psyche.” Even though on-the-ground management may be applying new understandings, he says, the Park Service continues in its public statements, as well as in its legal mandate, to affi rm “the national park covenant—the promise that what we love will not change.”7 The Ken Burns national park film articulates this covenant with great power. One of the dominant themes of the film, told by the creators of the film as well as by countless known and unknown people they interview, is that the promise of our national parks is that you can have the same experience your great-grandfather had and can pass this same experience on to your great-grandchildren. You can go home again, as numerous people say. The park will be there for you, as it always was.8 These images of continuity and security are why “Educating the public to accept change is perhaps the greatest challenge a government agency can face.” This is harder for the National Park Service than most because it has emphasized “that its mission is to prevent change.” Tweed argues the NPS must abandon this position and “must begin talking about change as an inescapable part of the park world.”9 Although Tweed is a radical voice in pushing the Park Service to re-envision its calling, others go even further. Tweed’s disruptions of nature all come from humans; others, like ecologist Daniel Botkin, assert that nature, quite apart from human intervention, is “fundamentally stochastic [random] to some degree.”10 If this is so, how does one manage nature at all? Before one can begin to deal with that question, Botkin argues in Discordant Harmonies, we need a “shift in perception,” a change in our myths, in our symbols and metaphors, as we reflect on the relationship of humans and nature and on the reality of change. The model we have worked with, the “balance of nature,” “has meant not only . . . constancy and stability but also the idea that every creature has its place in the harmonious workings of nature and is well adapted to its niche.” He says we must uncover and “confront the very assumptions that have dominated perceptions of nature for a very long time.” We begin to see that the American myth of pristine wilderness is related to a larger narrative that expresses the ideals and values of western culture generally. Botkin says the myth of constancy is fed by the mechanistic world view which pervades our culture, including our understanding of nature: its parts all fit together in a readily comprehensible way; it operates according to understood, or understandable, rules and laws and is predictable. It is a world without chance and without history. Adherence to this narrative has led ecological theory to predict stability, even though what observation reveals “is variation rather than constancy.”11 This understanding, in turn, has supported park management practices that reinforce the narrative of pristine American nature being preserved unchanging in the national parks.

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Interestingly, Botkin, a scientist, is not arguing against a mythic narrative that articulates the guiding values of a culture, but for an understanding of how this narrative has shaped our world view and values so we can move beyond it and “create a new mythology consistent with the facts and science and appropriate for our time.”12 This blending of science and value, with both articulated in symbol and myth, grows out of the new paradigm Botkin is arguing for. Central to this paradigm (which uses a nonmechanistic model) is nonequilibrium dynamics. Disturbance is seen as a natural part of ecosystems, rather than something external from which they recover and return to stability—or from which humans should protect natural systems, as in the earlier understanding of fi re. The metaphor of the balance of nature is replaced by the metaphor of nature in flux. “Ecosystems are highly dynamic and they change in complex, nonlinear, and unpredictable ways.” When managing a national park, then, there are many possible desirable outcomes for any interventions; “there is no single true natural state.”13 In Religion and the New Ecology: Environmental Responsibility in a World in Flux, editors C. Hamlin and D.M. Lodge note that in an earlier period when the metaphor of the balance of nature reigned, “it had been easy to commit the naturalistic fallacy” and say “nature’s way was right.” But with the metaphor of flux, there is no one “natural” way, so managers must decide which of nature’s ways they want to “establish, maintain, restore, or change.”14 “The trouble with naturalness” (as G.H. Aplet and D.N. Cole’s essay in Beyond Naturalness paraphrases William Cronon’s “The Trouble with Nature”) is that to claim to manage for naturalness is a way of avoiding the real choices humans have to make. Accepting this new metaphor of flux as applying not only to ecological theory, but to human experience in the world generally, would require “profound intellectual, cultural, and religious changes.”15 Philosopher of science Patricia Ann Fleming further draws out the implications of this new model for humans and nature as she focuses on the connection between nature and value and their mutual reinforcement. She argues that relations between nature and the moral life must be understood metaphorically. As Botkin, she imagines that it is possible for human cultures to construct a narrative that integrates the whole of their lives— including values and science. Thus, scientific knowledge that helps us understand our world through metaphors of flux and complexity (and chaos, she would add), offers us metaphors for understanding and shaping the moral self.16 Scientific and value models are interwoven and shape each other. She begins with the usefulness of the new metaphors of nonlinearity and interdependence for understanding and managing nature. Metaphors of nonlinearity provide a richer model for understanding the complex behavior of ecosystems. Opposing tendencies may be built into a single system, so it is not necessary to ignore or downplay what does not seem to fit, as it is in a binary system. The failure to recognize the large role of nonlinearity

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in nature has meant that the subtlety of nature has been invisible. Metaphors of interdependence, on the other hand, lead one to see reciprocating mutual interactions and effects, and the possibilities of new forms of organization and order. The ideal moral self that is illuminated through these metaphors acknowledges “opposing tendencies” as well as “mutually reciprocating ways of joining together.”17 Moral effects of human actions are not guaranteed—so one must live and act with uncertainty; they are the result of complex interactions with other humans’ actions, reinforcing the necessity of recognizing the human ecosystem—or community. Botkin adds that new metaphors must include many events simultaneously as a connected network and must incorporate chance (he says, not chaos). His nonmechanistic metaphor for nature is the biosphere: “a new organic view of the Earth, a view in which we are part of a living and changing system.”18 Similarly, in rethinking “naturalness” Aplet and Cole say, “It is time to articulate goals and objects for parks and wilderness that are founded in a perspective that views humans as part of, rather than apart from, nature.”19 One crucial implication of these ways of thinking is that the dichotomy between nature and culture vanishes and humans are reimagined as part of, rather than apart from, ecosystems. The new approach to management that comes out of this shift of paradigm does not ignore traditional approaches to “intervention.”20 However, they must be used working out of the new narrative that says because dynamic ecosystems are complex and uncertain, human managers must be flexible and be prepared to try different approaches as required by changing circumstances. Usually the goal of research is to reduce uncertainty, but with this new model it is necessary to “incorporate uncertainty into decision-making.”21 When evaluating management decisions, ecosystem attributes such as species preserved, ecological integrity, historical fidelity, and resilience should be considered—but these do not all necessarily go together, so choices must be made. 22 Management of Tuolumne Meadows over a period of time involving climate change provides an example of how different approaches would produce different results. If the focus were on historical fidelity, which would mean sustaining the area as the largest subalpine meadow in the Sierra Nevada, removal of encroaching lodgepole pine would be necessary, as well as, perhaps, irrigation. If instead the focus were on integrity and resilience, management might let lodgepole pine invade, but would intervene to “ensure the hydrologic regimes remain functional and the viability of the meadow species was not threatened.”23 Another example of how this might work is described by William Tweed in Sequoia National Park. In the late 1990s (and after twenty years of planning), the restoration of Giant Forest was accomplished by removing two hundred and eighty buildings and a million square feet of asphalt from around the trees. “We imagined we were securing the foreseeable future of the grove . . . [so the] Giant Forest could and would be ‘preserved unimpaired’ for

230 Pilgrimage to the National Parks future generations.” He now realizes that was a twentieth century solution, no longer applicable in a time of climate change, pollution, and fragmentation of ecosystems. “Preserving the sequoias in this new century will require solutions we have barely begun to imagine.”24 The primary approach of this project was historical fidelity; with more attention to ecological integrity and resilience, the project might have added lower-elevation species rather than what had been there in the past in order to address the spreading effects of climate change.25 However, this would not have addressed the fate of the sequoias themselves. Tweed says, assuming climate change proceeds, there will be three choices for how park managers can respond. They can manage for naturalness and let nature take its course, even if it means the dying out of the sequoias. They can manage for change and intervene by trying to facilitate the sequoias moving to higher elevations and perhaps even out of the park. A third alternative would be to create an “ecosystem museum,” doing everything possible to sustain the sequoias in the park, even when it was no longer their natural habitat.26 The second and third choices might not succeed, but even if they did it is hard to say which of the three choices is most desirable for an understanding of national parks as pilgrimage sites. In which way would Sequoia National Park be best able to continue to embody beliefs and values of Americans in this natural setting? We are reminded of Tweed’s earlier assertion that accepting change is a great challenge, especially for the National Park Service, with its mandate to preserve the parks unimpaired. In the preface to Tweed’s book, Director of the National Park Service Jonathan B. Jarvis demonstrates this reluctance as he says, “If we rush into a new paradigm of manipulative park management based on a new set of human values, rather than those of nature, we risk a competing push from those who contend that, since the parks are already altered, we may as well manipulate them to produce greater economic value.” The danger is no doubt real because the new narrative requires a subtlety and willingness to work with uncertainty that is not present in a culture that is more comfortable with certainties. Jarvis goes on to say his agency, using science and public input, must fight “current challenges to its fundamental tenet that the parks must preserve all their resources ‘unimpaired’ forever for the enjoyment of all.”27 Perhaps he is not aware that the book for which he is writing the foreword, is just such a challenge—or, more likely, he is aware of the political importance of maintaining what can be seen as scientifically outmoded language. In a similar way, in 1994 social scientist William Lowry affirmed that “what makes national parkland different is the ideal of a timeless preserve” and noted how the U.S. differed from Canada in the period between 1980 and 1994, as Canada moved toward more protection, while the National Park Service moved to more development “as a result of political influence.”28 The early 1980s under Secretary Watt were a period when the understanding of preservation changed, allowing more development; and this was repeated in the beginning decade of the twenty-fi rst century

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as a new set of management policies was developed by Interior, under Gale Norton, to replace the Service’s 2001 management policies. The 2001 policies, which had been developed in response to the Natural Resource Challenge that had called into question the Park Service’s ability to manage the parks wisely, primarily because of the new awareness of external threats (see Chapter 7), had a stronger ecological emphasis. The draft of new policies that was prepared without consulting the Park Service attempted to take away this emphasis. The response of the Park Service when the draft was leaked in 2005 was intense. Richard Sellars’ report of this event states, “This episode involving the department’s secret revision of the Service’s management policies marks the most manipulative, pervasive, and politically potent attempt to radically alter the National Park Service’s caretaking of lands entrusted to it since its founding in 1916.” Jonathan Jarvis, then Pacific West regional director, “put his criticism in writing with a memorandum to the Park Service’s Washington office denouncing the revised policies, correctly noting that they were the ‘largest departure from the core values of the National Park System in its history, posing a threat to the integrity of the entire system.’”29 The secret draft deleted most references to science and ecosystems and “critics charged that these revisions would have reduced preservation of the parks to only avoiding permanent and irreversible damage to park resources, eliminated limits to motorized traffic, encouraged continued grazing and mining in certain areas, and lowered air quality standards.”30 Following a great deal of public involvement, the revised 2006 plan undid much of these changes. “Nevertheless,” according to environmental lawyer David Becker, “the 2006 Management Policies represent a departure from the priority accorded to conservation in the 2001 Management Policies.” He cites as examples the small but significant change in the 2006 document that adds, “‘an impact to any park resource or value may, but does not necessarily, constitute an impairment.’” The 2006 policy also introduces the term “‘unacceptable impacts’” to describe what constitutes an impairment—leaving the door open for activities that would have been prohibited under the 2001 document to be introduced at the discretion of a park manager.31 With this background, we can better understand Director Jarvis’s emphasis on “preserving resources unimpaired forever for the enjoyment of all”—even in the face of scientific understanding that, given the dynamic flux of nature and human-caused environmental change, this covenant cannot be kept. The politics require that attention be paid to immediate threats related to mechanized recreation on the one hand and extractive development on the other. But will this denial of change for political reasons hinder the planning that is needed to respond to the more long term issues of climate change and pollution? How do park managers and pilgrims to the parks work with these uncertainties? We will look at new possibilities for both management and pilgrimage.

232 Pilgrimage to the National Parks A VISION FOR THE FUTURE Despite significant developments in the understanding of the changing dynamics of nature and American culture, we must ask how much of this has been incorporated into national park policies. Has the traditional National Park Idea really undergone a change that makes the management of the park and the experience of the visitor-pilgrims radically different? If flux is a necessary component to understanding the dynamics of ecosystems and one grand narrative is inadequate to telling the full story of Americans, is a new mythic narrative developing for the national parks that can allow for the gaps that can bring both uncertainty and creative movement? In 2009 the National Parks Conservation Association published the report of the Second Century Commission, which the organization had convened a year before to ponder the future of the national parks. The Commission, chaired by former Senators Howard Baker and Bennett Johnston, had six standing committees, and solicited input from several public hearings. The names of the standing committees reveal new directions: the fi rst-listed committee was Science and Natural Resources, indicating a dramatic change from earlier times when science was not part of the agenda. The Cultural Resource and Historic Preservation Committee indicated a new focus, as these areas in the past would have been subsumed under Interpretation, which was here identified as The Education and Learning Committee. It is noteworthy that each of these three reports claims that its area has been neglected by the Park Service in the past. The Committees for Connecting People and Parks and Future Shape of the National Park System also indicated changed emphases and concerns for the parks.32 The report, “Advancing the National Park Idea,” is the imagining of future possibilities for the parks that both holds to the tradition of the National Park Idea and transforms it in ways that are far from traditional. The Executive Summary begins with a description of national parks that fits with the understanding in this book of national parks as sacred sites: “Americans have a deep and enduring love for the national parks, places we treasure because they embody our highest ideals and values. National parks tell our stories and speak of our identity as a people and a nation.” What are our ideals and values and what are the stories we share, according to this study? The Commission’s report concludes, and most of the Committees’ reports agree, that “The National Park Service has great potential to advance society’s most critical objectives: building national community and sustaining the health of the planet.” These are the values and ideals. In order to do that, the report emphasizes, the parks must change. Because of both climate change in nature and demographic change in culture, the Idea of the National Park must expand and become something new.33 All the committee reports speak to these two issues to some degree. The Science and Natural Resource Committee obviously addresses environmental issues. The group subtitles its report “A Science-based System

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for Tomorrow,” and sets as its goal for the NPS “a science-determined representation of the nation’s terrestrial and ocean heritage unimpaired.” Although such a statement seems to deny the values element we have seen to be present in any representation of nature, the vision statement goes on to say that the lands will be “managed to sustain ecological integrity, beauty, enjoyment, and national identity,” thus clearly bringing in values and ideals of a shared narrative. At least one reason for the beginning dogmatic statement about science’s role may well be because science has had to fight for a voice in management of the parks in the past, as we saw in Chapter 7. Asserting that the lands of the parks must be managed, the report at least ignores, if not argues against, the policy of natural regulation as it asserts, “National Parks are a human invention wherein it is intended that nature and human use both thrive in perpetuity,” and that humans “have an active role in preserving them.” Central to this management vision is that national parks shall be “key elements of a network of sustainable uninterrupted ecological systems of linked land and waters.” The bedrock principle here is that parks are not islands and creating partnerships across federal agencies as well as with private landowners is essential to the future of national parks. Also essential—and not only to the parks, but to life on the planet in general—is the recognition that “uncertainty and change” are part of our reality; and one of the greatest contributions the national parks can make to contemporary culture is the lesson that the NPS approach of “managing use within the limits of natural system resilience leads to understanding how to live within environmental means” outside the parks as well. The Cultural Resource and Historic Preservation report is subtitled “A Different Past in a Different Future,” which stresses not only being open to change in the future, but also to a new understanding of the past. “The single most important characteristic of NPS institutional capacity in the second century must be the ability to conceive and consciously move toward a desired future that is very different from past or present.” Changing American demographics requires the parks to change because “all Americans should be able to recognize themselves and their stories” in the parks. Central to accomplishing this, in parallel with the science report, is the development of partners outside park lands. “Not all nationally significant places should be preserved in public ownership,” and part of the job of the Park Service is to facilitate the success of these protected lands outside the parks. Within the parks changes must occur as well, as the many stories of America are taken into account. “Basic assumptions about nature, beauty, recreation, and history may change, possibly in fundamental ways. The National Park Service must lead the change or else be changed by it.” Attending to issues of the natural world, the report also notes that the Service should “help visitors comprehend their own interdependence with other species” and evokes not only science but also tribal wisdom as important resources so “the lessons of science are presented in tandem with the older, deeper, and more spiritual lessons from generations of indigenous cultures.”

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Both the Science and Culture Reports emphasize education in their particular areas and the Education Report offers possibilities for expanding nontraditional approaches, particularly with the alternatives of distance learning and place-based learning. Both can involve greater use of technology, which is seen as essential to the Service’s being on the same wave length as many of its prospective visitors. Engaging audiences that reflect the diversity of the nation is a central focus here as in the Culture Report, and is also central to the Connecting People and Parks Report, which employs social science studies to better understand who is and is not part of the audience. This report makes the recurring emphasis on diversity most strongly as it challenges the Service to “Establish a universal commitment within the Park Service to engage and serve people of all backgrounds with an urgency and dedication that equals the commitment to preserve park resources.” The fi nal report we will consider, “The Future Shape of the National Park System,” presents the most complete statement of the two themes. Although the foci on ecological integrity and being inclusive of all Americans often seem unconnected, this report brings them together, as well as the emphasis on partnerships: “National parks are cornerstones of a network that protects the nation’s biological, geological, and cultural diversity. Corridors between them sustain connectivity. Sites reflecting the complexity of the American experience weave together a unified national tapestry.” The report specifies that the cultural diversity it seeks to protect, includes not only ethnic and racial diversity, but also the aging population, urbanites, and those with technological sophistication. It notes that to succeed in this goal, cooperation with other agencies is essential. This is the vision and the challenge. It is clearly not at odds with more traditional statements of national park goals, but with the focus on the Park Service’s interactions with nonpark lands, the central role of science, and a vastly expanded pilgrim base, at least subtle changes in the mythic narrative are required. Some of the reports point out specific ways this narrative must change. The Science Report, for example, calls for a rethinking of the Old West, which is central to the traditional narrative. It recommends “a review of laws and policies established long-ago to promote exploration and settlement of the west, such as those subsidizing mining and grazing, for their economic and ecological compatibility with the future needs of the National Park System.” The Culture Report plays on the general theme that both the nature parks and the Edenic America mythology that have been so prominent in the traditional narrative should be replaced or broadened. “What must be left behind is nostalgia for some mythical time when all seemed simple and well”—the time before the coming of the white man, as we have seen. The Education Report also makes a recommendation that threatens a long-held Park Service tradition: “The old role of the ranger as authority is increasingly leaving audiences behind, while twenty-fi rst century audiences seek to participate and become personally involved.” It calls for replacement of “vestiges of command-and-control with a culture that

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challenges and inspires individuals in pursuit of a common vision.” The call for more grassroots collaborations throughout the reports reaffirms this point. The locations at which the Second Century Commission met to deliberate also reflect their conclusions. It is no surprise that Yellowstone was one of the locations, although the stress on the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem might be. The others were the Santa Monica National Recreation Area, “a mosaic of living communities and protected lands”; Lowell, Massachusetts, a site of historic preservation the NPS has been a key player in; Essex National Heritage Area, by defi nition a venture that includes local people and NPS assistance; and Gettysburg, which includes a new visitor center that is an “innovative example of private-public partnership.”34

PILGRIMAGE IN THE GAPS Following the model of dynamic change and interconnections discussed earlier and the vision of the Second Century Commission, pilgrimage would take a different shape. If a national park is not an island, but a place where connectivity between park and nonpark land is stressed; a place that holds many stories, some of them in conflict, and offers no origin story of a primal, untouched land awaiting the arrival of the white man; a place that has no high priest (or ranger) who has all the answers and dispels all uncertainties, but that encourages pilgrims to fi nd their own way and create new rituals and traditions—then, pilgrimage to the parks would mirror these elements. The parks may well be seen as “spaces by the side of the road,” as Stewart puts it, gaps where uncertainty and creativity merge and the pilgrim is left in America’s sacred places without the security of one authoritative story. We will look at a few views of what pilgrimage in the gaps looks like. Two cultural analysts provide useful lenses through which to examine what pilgrimage might be in such a space. Rebecca Solnit has written about Yosemite and Mark Neumann about Grand Canyon. Solnit’s studies of Yosemite demonstrate the importance of the images artists have created of Yosemite in shaping the values pilgrims find therein. She says the way of seeing Yosemite—or any park—is through the “Euro-American experience of landscape” in which Yosemite “is pictured as a virgin landscape.” This is the pristine, unpeopled land that was thought to await the arrival of the Europeans. She sees John Muir’s writings and Ansel Adams’ photographs as teaching visitors to see Yosemite in this way. Solnit was involved in a rephotography project in Yosemite with photographers Mark Klett and Byron Wolfe. One of their projects was to rephotograph the setting that was the scene of Ansel Adams “Clearing Winter Storm.” Their version of the scene is titled “Clearing Autumn Smoke” and the smoke that partially veils the majestic mountains is, she notes, from a controlled burn, “an echo

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of Indian practices,” and an attempt to undo some of the problems created by years of fi re prevention. Seeing this human-nature collaboration in a positive light, rather than something that damages the aesthetic experience of the mountains, she says, “The smoke that veiled the clarity the modernists had so prized was a sign of regeneration—not only of forests, but of imaginations.”35 The messy world of nature in its imperfect, dynamic reality is not to be made invisible, but affi rmed. The pilgrim, then, does not enter into a pristine land, but one that is affected by humans as well as affecting them, just as it was before the coming of the white man. She also notes that the location from which the picture was taken was not wilderness at all, but a “few feet below the retaining wall of the Wawona Tunnel parking lot”—a busy place, both at the time of this project at the turn of the twenty-fi rst century and in the early twentieth century when Adams took his photograph. Tourists, parking lots, and construction equipment are part of the experience of the pilgrimage site, rather than something that should be rendered invisible. “As Solnit says of a new conception of nature that does not require closing one’s eyes or turning away from the parking lot, ‘There are bulldozers, and it’s beautiful.’”36 A

Figure 8.1 Clearing Winter Storm, Yosemite National Park, California, 1940. Photograph by Ansel Adams. (Collection Center for Creative Photography, The University of Arizona ©2012 The Ansel Adams Publishing Rights Trust.)

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film from 1989, Yosemite: The Fate of Heaven, narrated by Robert Redford and directed by Jon Else, inadvertently makes the same point. Although the focus of the cinematically outstanding fi lm is to raise consciousness about the fragility of the environment and to make a plea to “bring back conditions that formerly existed,” there are powerful scenes showing how the stereotypical tourists who are invading Yosemite by the millions actually appreciate and are touched by the wonder of the place. The fi lm shows bulldozers—moving the tons of garbage generated by the massive number of visitors—and they are not beautiful. But the fi lm gives the stories of some of the visitors who create this garbage and leads us to believe it is important that they are there.37 We are left with mixed messages. Solnit makes a second point with Adams’ photograph. The “Euro-American experience of landscape” not only denies the present reality but also denies history. The timeless moment of Edenic wilderness erases not only the fact that this Valley was inhabited by others when the Euro-Americans came, but also that it was fought over. “Nothing in these images . . . suggested that Yosemite was a battleground before it was a vacation destination. . . . The gap between our view of landscape and of history is full of

Figure 8.2 Clearing Autumn Smoke, Controlled Burn, 2002. Photograph by Mark Klett and Byron Wolfe. (Courtesy of Mark Klett.)

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lost stories, ravaged cultures, obliterated names.”38 Only as the stories of people who lived there and the stories of their expulsion were erased, could people become attached to the narrative of nature without people and make a pilgrimage to a pristine sacred space. What Solnit discovered over the course of the rephotography project, which they began in the 1990s and resumed in the early 2000s, was that the ways the Ahwahneechee peoples were represented in the narratives of interpretation had changed over ten years. Out of the gap a new history was being written. Significantly, a “brochure about the valley’s indigenous inhabitants was bilingual, in English and Miwok.” Although this was not to assume the Miwok would actually be read, “This was an extraordinary symbolic shift, since it recognized that the Miwok had their own culture” and were part of the history of the Valley. Another sign of the changed narrative was in the removal of signs that proclaimed that the Valley was discovered in 1851.39 Thus, the pilgrim’s experience would be to hear a narrative not of Euro-American discovery of pristine land, but of a heritage much more ancient, as well as the story of conflict and suffering, which are also part of the pilgrimage site. The park is not Eden, a place of retreat from current confl icts, but a place where ambiguities of past and present can be lived through from a new perspective. The inclusion of some American Indian history now occurs at most parks. For example, Gerard Baker, who is from North Dakota and has Mandan and Hidatsa ancestry, has been instrumental in bringing native history to a variety of national park sites. He was Superintendent at the Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument, a place that has undergone a dramatic change from being the site of “Custer’s Last Stand” to a dual commemoration of both sides who engaged in battle. This clearly changes the pilgrimage experience—for some, no doubt, in a disturbing way—as it offers an alternative view of American history, including native peoples rather than presenting them as the outside enemy. Baker was also in charge of the Lewis and Clark Expedition’s bicentennial, in which he included as important parts of the story the sixty-eight tribes they encountered on their journey. He is now Superintendent of Mount Rushmore, the park honoring U.S. Presidents and called “The Shrine of Democracy” by the South Dakota tourism bureau. What this designation means for Baker is that the Park should tell the story of all Americans. So the stories of the various native groups who inhabited the land become part of the interpretation of the Park. Native American hoop dances are performed—and so are the folk dances of various ethnic groups who came to America.40 Thus, the shrine of democracy is transformed from a hegemonic focus on American Presidents into a narrative about America’s people. Others besides Native Americans who have shared the parks’ history, but have remained invisible, are also having their stories included in the narrative. Shelton Johnson, ranger at Yosemite who was a key spokesperson in Ken Burns’ fi lm, tells the story of his own journey to the parks and

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enacts the story of Elizy Boman, an African American soldier who was part of the all-black regiment of the Ninth Cavalry who were part of the protective force in Yosemite National Park before the creation of the Park Service. In 1999 Johnson came across a photograph of five uniformed black men in Yosemite and through this he “uncovered the lost legacy of the African American soldiers.”41 Another story told in Ken Burns’ fi lm is that of Chirura Obata, who came as a young man to the United States in 1903 and, after visiting Yosemite’s dai-shizen, “Great Nature,” committed to stay. Because of the immigration laws at that time, being born in Japan he could not become a U.S. citizen. Nonetheless, he taught art at University of California, Berkeley, and spent summers in Yosemite, creating a collection of woodblock prints. When Japanese people in the U.S. were interned following the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Obata and his family were moved to a camp in Topez, Utah. He began an art school there to try to raise the spirits of those who, he felt, had been betrayed by the democracy they loved. Stories not only from the past, but also in the present, are also being enacted so African Americans and American Indians are not just the subject of stories but active agents in the parks. In Yellowstone native peoples have served as consultants related to wildlife management. “The long-standing tradition of American Indian Groups being affected by management policies instituted at Yellowstone but not having any influence over those policies themselves has . . . started to change.”42 An example of this is the Park Service working with the Inter Tribal Bison Cooperative that was formed

Figure 8.3 African American Cavalry, Yosemite, 1899. (Yosemite NPS Library RL-5701.)

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Figure 8.4 Evening Glow of Yosemite Waterfall, Yosemite National Park, no. 23 of the World Landscape Series, 1930. Woodcut by Chiura Obata, 1885–1975. (Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Achenbach Foundation for Graphic Arts, 1963.30.3126.23. Courtesy of the Obata Family.)

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in 1990 and now has a membership of fi fty-seven tribes who support each other in building buffalo herds on tribal lands and in relocating bison in the Greater Yellowstone Area.43 People of color are also increasingly becoming part of those who travel to the parks, coming into the gap created by destabilizing the Euro-American story. Native peoples are frequently given permission to perform ceremonies in the parks and to collect plants for ceremonial use, if it does not endanger natural resources. A 2004 Park Service report described the changed situation in a way that corresponds to the larger issue of changing boundaries in the parks: “Historically, the National Park Service has been attentive to only the natural and cultural resources found within the Park’s boundaries. But with the markedly increased involvement and participation of American Indians in recent times, Yellowstone is on an apparent path to realizing that many different Indians from across the country are historically and irreversibly linked to the landscape as much as any cultural or natural resource already present.”44 There is also an attempt at many parks to recruit people from the tribes that are linked to individual parks as rangers. Urban young people of color are also being encouraged into the parks, which is not familiar territory for most of them. Through project “Wildlink,” cooperatively supported by Yosemite National Park, Yosemite Institute, and other partners, youth are brought into Yosemite on backpacking trips. Judith Lewis tells the story of Los Angeles teens from rival high schools (and gangs) backpacking together in Yosemite and becoming unified adventurers. As they explored a difficult, but renewing, world they had not known, they also brought their own dance and cultural customs. In “Everyone’s Yosemite” this is what happens: their unique stories become part of the place, even as they are transformed by the place.45 Another example is in Rocky Mountain National Park where picnic areas have been rearranged to provide welcoming space for large Latino families from the area. Not only will such families be encouraged to enjoy outings in the Park, but the new arrangement may suggest to others that such a gathering in a park could be a meaningful experience. Solnit extends the range of stories further as she described her experience in Yosemite in the early 2000s. She saw a distinct change in park visitors from her visit ten years earlier, as she saw the multiculturalism of California becoming part of the National Park. California was now a white-minority state, “but the state demographics had not shifted as radically in a decade as the visitors to Yosemite had.” She notes that what had once seemed the property of one culture was becoming the property of everyone. Not unlike tourists in Yosemite from the very beginning, one way the people were making Yosemite their own was through photographing themselves in front of Yosemite’s wonders. Moving from a purist view of what park experience should be, Solnit could appreciate their photographic rituals. Seeing women in saris taking their places at Glacier Point, she says, “One thing that struck me about these tourists is that they moved with

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great sureness, knowing why they’d come and what to do and, seemingly, knowing when they were done. . . . Yosemite wasn’t a wilderness for them, and maybe it wasn’t even a vision of sublimity, but it was a place of arrival, and they seemed to have the satisfaction of those who have arrived.” She also notes the importance of the social and communal in their rituals: “it was as far as you could get from the old fantasy of being the fi rst foot to step in the pristine wilderness.”46 She sees a family of Sikhs emerge from a minivan at the Wawona Tunnel, bringing not only their native (and now South Asian-American) dress, but also their native (and now South Asian-American) music to the scene. “First the man in the turquoise turban who seemed to be the boy’s father photographed the boy in the red T-shirt and the man in a white turban with a long white shirt and beard who might have been his father, and then they put on some swirling South Asian music that spilled over to us on the edge of the vast expanse of the valley.” Not only are they making Yosemite part of their own narrative, but they are also creating a new experience of Yosemite for the other tourists. Seeing people with various non-Euro-American backgrounds becoming part of Yosemite’s story suggested to her “the possibility of seeing an entirely different Yosemite. . . . In this Yosemite, northern European romanticism, Wordsworth and the Alps and maybe even Muir were tiny figures obscure in the distance, or over the horizon altogether or maybe composted into the culture, feeding it by losing their recognizability.”47 The western European way of seeing is not discarded, but becomes fertile soil out of which new experiences can grow and not only for Americans who do not share this background, but even for those who do. The possibility of pilgrims recognizing—or discovering—their own stories in the parks is part of living in the gaps. Mark Neumann’s rich study of the Grand Canyon contains a thread that explores a range of tourist experiences of the Canyon. Although he often unmasks the emptiness of tourist rituals, he seems to come to value the ordinary experiences of ordinary people who come to make the Grand Canyon their own.48 He demonstrates this in a charming vignette about tourists who follow the other’s lead in throwing coins out on a rock a short distance from the rim. As any good keeper-of-the-canyon would do, a ranger informs them to stop this carnival activity which is polluting the canyon. One of the tourists tries to explain how this activity means something more than that. Neumann explains, they know what pollution is—cigarette butts, aluminum cans—but “this is money from the pocket. Piling up, glinting in the sun, here is opportunity, a time for banking on the supernatural, a sudden and unexpected expression of the canyon’s Supernature.” The coins are for Neumann a gap—a sign of “how the canyon’s tourist culture is not a preserve of ideas or preformulated packages,” but, as Stewart says, a space by the side of the road, “‘a social imaginary erupting out of a storied cultural real.’” Neumann presents them as standing outside the official representations of the canyon, exploring their own “personal quests for redemption and renewal.”49

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Following this story, Neumann presents picture after picture of tourists, presumably pictures he took of the various people he interviewed at Grand Canyon. Some appear as ordinary tourists, old and young; some are dressed to catch attention, whether as a flag-carrying hiker or by wearing a short black evening dress. Some are families, some concession workers or rangers; some dressed as cowboys or Indians. Certainly these pictures could have been included to disparage the typical tourist culture found at national parks. But Neumann’s point seems to be that all of them are “making the scene,” as he puts it, recognizing “themselves and their stories in the parks,” as the Second Century Report says, by creating their own space as part of the Grand Canyon. There are many Grand Canyons, Neumann notes—as many as there are pilgrims on their personal quests in the larger drama of the Grand Canyon. Photographer Roger Minick’s “Sightseer Series” makes public art out of these private scenes, showing us more gaps. The Yosemite National Park series includes “Woman at Inspiration Point,” where the wonders of Yosemite are shown as they are being observed by a woman looking down

Figure 8.5 Woman at Inspiration Point, 1980 Yosemite National Park, CA. Photograph by Roger Minick. (Courtesy of Roger Minick.)

244 Pilgrimage to the National Parks the valley toward Half Dome. Because she is facing away from the camera, unlike usual tourist photos, the viewer observes her as she takes in the Yosemite scene. That she is a true-blue tourist is shown by the “Yosemite National Park” scarf she wears. The viewer’s response might be either unhappiness with a tourist for spoiling the scene or a more detached sense of mockery at how tourists spoil a scene—both responses coming from an understanding that true nature does not include people. Or the viewer might see the photo as mocking those who see the parks as wilderness without people. On reflection, though, the viewer might wonder if the woman herself is having the experience of the Valley that the viewer remembers having and realizes that only by having people at the scene can it be seen and photographed, leaving the viewer with a poignant paradox. It is beautiful and there are bulldozers, as Solnit would say. Or perhaps the viewer sees them not as incongruous images but, working with a narrative that says humans belong in nature, sees nature and culture creating their own meaningful harmony. Minick gives us a series of ways of responding, and just the recognition of the unexpectedness of seeing a person in the scene opens a gap and asks for reflection on the meaning of humans and nature. Similar issues are sparked by Ted Orland’s One-and-a-Half Domes which presents Half Dome from a park-established “scenic viewpoint.” Although the stunning rock face would be the scene the tourist stopped to view, Orland gives us the full scene which includes natural wonders, human culture, and wildlife. Half Dome is in the background in grey scale colors with an interpretative display that gives a brightly colored human rendering

Figure 8.6 One-and-a-Half Domes, Yosemite National Park, 1976. Photograph by Ted Orland. (Courtesy of Ted Orland.)

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of the panorama, including Half Dome, with a red, white, and blue background designating geological layers. In the foreground, standing at the same angle as the distant Half Dome, is a bear-proof garbage can with its half-domed top. 50 One-and-a-Half Domes calls attention to the very real presence of human culture, clearly part of the scene, and the way an individual’s experience of the park is directed and controlled by interpretive displays. But in doing so it also frees the viewer to see both the spoof and the spectacular natural formation, to remember that bears are a part of the scene and are endangered by human sloppiness, and to see both the power and limitations of interpretation. These photographers are not following in the steps of Bierstadt or Ansel Adams but are subversive of traditional ways of seeing national parks, inviting park goers to experience a gap that will allow them to see not the “official” park, but their “own Yosemite.” The coin-throwers described earlier were also subversive, at least as far as the ranger was concerned, as they acted, both individually and collectively, to reach beyond the canon of established rituals for possibilities they sensed in the Canyon. Solnit’s sari and turban wearers could also be included in this category. Neumann’s book makes the point that often an official canon that attempts to regulate the “park experience” would, like the ranger in this case, attempt to snuff out such nonofficial rituals. But given the vision of the future of the parks seen in this chapter in both the model of nature as dynamic change and in the Second Century report, it seems the personal quests Neumann holds up and the new ways of seeing Minick and Orland invite are in some ways exactly in line with a vision of nature and the parks which “officialdom” is entertaining. We have then a possible model for pilgrimage to the national parks which is within the institution of the parks while still being within the spirit of the space by the side of the road. Pilgrimage in this model of dynamic change, could include elements of an official narrative, connected to and sometimes in confl ict with vernacular personal stories and shared values and collective actions alongside individual quests. One form of engagement for park visitors that creates possibilities for seeing parks in new ways are the Artist-in-Residence (AiR) programs. Grand Canyon has an especially strong AiR program that brings in a new artist every month. The arts represented in 2010–2011 included music, painting, sculpture, poetry, dance, literature, videography, and installation art. The artists’ plans almost always involve those who visit the Canyon in their project and they all explore the intersections of nature and culture. One artist plays the shakuhachi, a Japanese bamboo flute, “known for evoking the sounds of nature with a tradition of playing outdoors as a meditative practice.” An environmental installation artist uses photography to create petrographs which she prints on stones and then returns to their place in nature, where she photographs them as they—like we—respond to the forces of nature. A painter “hopes to encourage people to take time to look when they take a journey,” “to actually spend time looking at something amazing.” A composer of

246 Pilgrimage to the National Parks soundscapes gives workshops to “entice park visitors and residents to walk ‘following their ears’ and to become aware of natural quiet and ambient soundscapes.”51 These creative moments clearly follow no official line; they present unpredictable glimpses into the Canyon, rituals that come and go by the month, alike only in engaging their environment, the Grand Canyon, and the pilgrims who happen on their path, perhaps sparking creativity in them as well. Interpretive programs try to create new forms of pilgrimage by following the recommendation of the Second Century Commission to involve the participants rather than presenting them with an authoritative ranger who has all the answers. There is necessarily some tension in the model where an official institution tries to promote nonprescribed, creative behavior in those who visit. Nonetheless, there are models for this in the parks. One simple example is at Glacier National Park, where a combination of authoritative direction and personal incorporation of meaning is found in the Trail of the Cedars walk. When I visited the park it was the walk rangers most often recommended—meaning, I think, that the Park Service knew it did not have many chances to catch people on their quick drive through, and this was one point of focus. The walk was less than a mile, a horseshoe journey along a raised, wooden boardwalk through grand trees and shrubbery, with benches for contemplating—or, more mundanely, resting—along the way. The journey was facilitated not by a ranger, but by strategically placed signs that provided both information and inspiration. They not only described what one was seeing, but also suggested how to think about it. The fi rst message directed the pilgrim to Explore the forest slowly. Spend some time sitting quietly, doing nothing. Read the messages along the way, explore with your senses, but above all linger a while and become a part of the surrounding forest. At the end of the trail, at the point of returning to civilization, a sign said, “The asphalt will take you to your car. Walk slowly and think about what you have seen.” In a ritualized way, this simple path invites tourists to enter into a special—liminal—space and there to experience the mystery of nature. Of course, what people actually do and experience would be individual. But the Park Service is creating the possibility of a space by the road where some new perspective or understanding could emerge. Another example of this approach—and of the complexities of it—are seen in Neumann’s description of the “Awesome Chasm” ranger-led walk he took at the Grand Canyon. Ranger Karen provided the participants with index cards on which she had written geological and biological information about the Grand Canyon. At appropriate moments she asked one of the participants to read his or her card. Thus, although she was the authority she invited everyone to join in teaching the others. After they had fi nished the walk she told them “that she fi nds inspiration and clarity on the canyon’s

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rim” and asked them to write down their own thoughts about the canyon, inviting personal reflections on the meaning of the Canyon experience. Not surprisingly, the comments mostly echoed what she had been stressing during the walk about the insignificance of humans in the face of the vastness and grandeur of the Grand Canyon. However, as Ranger Karen read the comments aloud, she discovered one dissenter who did not feel insignificant and did not appreciate her saying he was. Neumann makes the point that although Karen appeared to share authority, she was the one in charge and she succeeded in bringing all but one person into her ritual, where they joined her in affirming a very traditional evocation of a sublime experience. This is officialdom, certainly, which the lone dissenter only emphasized. On the other hand, he says, there was more going on, “a less conspicuous display of power rested in our complicity to collaborate in this collective fiction; one that recognized consensus and conformity as an expression of our own choices.”52 Perhaps the dissenter created a gap that allowed them to see their own agency in making this choice and standing with the group. But it is a temporary place to stand. There are many Grand Canyons, even for individuals. If they choose to enter and explore the meanings in Karen’s narrative today, tomorrow they will create another. Neumann includes horror stories about “the family vacation” in the Grand Canyon, but he also suggests that in the midst of that there is the opportunity—the opening, the gap—for seeing one’s ordinary life in a new way. He says of people like the coin throwers or the Awesome Chasm group, “As canyon tourists actively engage the landscape, they produce visions of time and space where their lives are reframed, reimagined, and reinvented.” Neumann turns to Paul Ricoeur’s lectures on Utopia and Ideology to analyze what he sees as the powerful possibilities of transformation in this liminal space of the national park.53 Ricoeur describes utopias and ideologies as constructions that exist in relation to each other. Ideologies in their positive form provide an integrative function for society and enable it to preserve an identity. However, as the ideology is legitimated and power is concentrated, it becomes hegemonic. What is needed at that point is utopian thinking which is able to imagine a “nowhere”—an empty place from which to look at ourselves and see our cultural system from the outside. Ricoeur describes it this way: “From this ‘no place’ an exterior glance is cast on our reality, which suddenly looks strange, nothing more being taken for granted. The field of the possible is now open beyond that of the actual; it is a field, therefore, for alternative ways of living.”54 This is what Neumann sees as a possibility for visitors to the Grand Canyon as they reflect on their lives at home. But it is not accidental that it occurs in this space. He says this opportunity for transformed living can happen “in a place of cultural import; it is as if the cultural authority of the landscapes invites them to ceremonialize their lives and relationships for themselves.” Whether directed by the Park Service or created individually,

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because of the cultural authority of the space and their engagement with it, the Canyon offers “screens on which people project possibilities for alternative visions of life, society, and culture.”55 In spite of the enthusiasm with which Neumann embraces the possibilities of tourists “making the scene” and remaking their lives, when he thinks of the larger structures of power he emphasizes the failure of the image of the Grand Canyon, from Thomas Moran on, that has shaped the way the Canyon has been seen. “It is a way of seeing that inspires utopian images—glances toward elsewhere—but these images remain as discursive fantasies that do not often materialize in any other form because of an ideology, that, ironically, reproduces and preserves an idea of the canyon as a painting of a premodern Eden.”56 Although I might offer the analysis that it is the utopian dream of an American Eden, which is wholly unrealizable and therefore remains in Ricoeur’s terms the negative side of a utopia which is a fantasy, I agree that it is that unrealizable vision at the heart of the traditional park narrative that has led to dilemmas in park management and unrealizable dreams for pilgrims. On the other hand, we must acknowledge that the Grand Canyon is not a “nowhere”; it is a very real “somewhere” with real problems and real opportunities. Perhaps the question is whether the new understanding of dynamic change in nature and culture that can be applied to park management and visitor experience might serve as a model—utopian to be sure—for the ideals and values of “building national community and sustaining the health of the planet,” as the Second Century Report envisioned. If we add this to Neumann’s focus on individuals making the scene and transforming their lives, the park becomes “a place by the side of the road,” a kind of nowhere—that is at the same time a place with cultural authority, a national sacred space. This mingling of official and personal, individual and collective brings to mind Bodnar’s combining of official and vernacular at sites of commemoration. These sites inevitably bring together many voices, as we see at the Grand Canyon. “Public memory,” he argues, can be “simultaneously multivocal and hegemonic.” Further, “In modern America,” nation state and the language of patriotism best contain “the multivocal quality of public commemorations.”57 The fact that this joining of public commemorations and nation state seems quite obvious simply emphasizes that in the U.S. it is the “country”—whether thought of politically or culturally (both of which include geography)—that provides the center where different individuals and groups of various sorts can fi nd common ground. I had not expected to fi nd this continued emphasis on nationalism in the contemporary period. When I began mapping out the different stages of national park history, I assumed that in this third stage, which is characterized by an emphasis on an ecological approach that deemphasizes boundaries—not only at the edges of parks, but between nations as well— nationalism would fade in the mythic narrative. To be sure, nationalism is not all there is. Clearly, international partnering is an important part

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of contemporary national parks and those connections are expressed in the narrative through the importance of world heritage sites, international peace parks, and biosphere reserves, for example. Additionally, the patriotism that is still at the core of the story is of a different sort from the early twentieth century’s See America First attempt to demonstrate that the U.S. had greater scenery—and was therefore greater—than any other country. Sociologist David Jacobson points out that many of the iconic national parks “were declared World Heritage Sites under the auspices of the United Nations” and goes on to assert that “The sensibility of a bounded nation with an exclusive moral tie to the land, or a culturally homogeneous landscape, was no longer presumed.”58 If the park narrative did leave behind the foundational symbol of the land as integral with American character and democracy and added the affi rmation of a multicultural society, this would indeed signal a new understanding of nationalism in the mythic narrative, which would also carry different ideals and values. Historian of American religion Edward Linenthal suggests that parks might play a new role in American culture by addressing issues raised by parks that apply to the larger culture both in terms of natural and cultural history. He sees parks as being sites “for practicing public dialogue and arts of democracy.” Parks, then, might be “forums as well as shrines.”59 Or, we might suggest, a new kind of shrine, one that is not timeless and apart from ordinary life, but a place to reflect on and deepen understanding of ordinary life based on ideals and values of this pilgrimage place. Should values and ideals include the understanding of nature and culture as mutually involved in a world of dynamic change, the reflections would lead to different ways of managing and experiencing the pilgrimage site. That religious language is used by Neumann, as well as in many park documents, to try to relate the experience that can occur in the liminal place by the side of the road, is not surprising. Religious language is a way of giving voice to how humans create and discover meaning within the world of nature/culture. The Science Report in the Second Century Commission Report, for example, identifies spirituality as one of the purposes of the parks. When Director Jarvis spoke at the George Wright Society Conference in 2011 he identified parks as holding “places sacred to us as a people” and said “parks have been regarded as holy places of the nation.”60 The mission statement for Wild and Scenic Rivers Task Force Report in 2007 said, “Rivers are an important part of our nation’s natural and cultural heritage. Since time immemorial, they have provided physical sustenance and spiritual inspiration.”61 Although Rebecca Solnit does not use overtly religious language, she too envisions transformations of ideals and values that suggest the power of national parks as American pilgrimage sites. Using language that parallels the possibilities of the space by the side of the road, she sees this moment—of saris and turbans and ways American Indian stories are told, for example—as a special moment in history.

250 Pilgrimage to the National Parks We’re seeing a window in time that rarely occurs, the moment in which ideas and convictions converge in the same frame and mingle, becoming clear before being scattered once again. We’re between landscapes, and we’re seeing the overlay clearly in a way that’s normally impossible. . . . We’re seeing the formation of a new relationship between culture and nature, one less adversarial in focus, one defi ned by the human need for close connection to place, one that honors iconography and that’s as social as it is personal, one that will ultimately redefi ne our images and messages.62 The language of religion and the language of transformation have been part of the national parks for the last century and a half and, as pilgrimage sites, the parks have provided the opportunity for Americans to explore values of nature and culture—how humans live in the natural world and how they live with each other, or as the Second Century Report states its values and ideals: “building national community and sustaining the health of the planet.” The question is whether the national parks, in this time between landscapes, can become one of the voices both articulating and embodying a model of nature and culture as interconnected in a world of dynamic change, whether they might be spaces by the side of the road where it would be possible both to examine our culture from outside, from a nowhere, and reimagine possibilities for what it might become. But since they are also a somewhere, a real place facing real issues, whether they might also be, as the Science Report of the Second Century Commission said, a model for living in our world in a sustainable way. Ricoeur says all utopias reimagine the power structure—to “living without hierarchical structure and instead with mutuality.”63 What might be imagined through the national parks is mutuality not only of humans, but also of the natural world of which humans are a part.

Notes

NOTES TO THE INTRODUCTION 1. Although the term “civil religion” has received extensive and proper criticism, there is still a need to have a means of analyzing the shared narratives and symbols that circulate in a culture. John F. Wilson used the term “public religion” in John F. Wilson, Public Religion in American Culture (Philadelphia: Temple Univ. Press, 1979). This subject is currently under wide discussion, including, for example, Ira Chernus, “Civil Religion,” in The Blackwell Companion to Religion in America, ed. Phillip Goff (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell Publishing, 2010). See also “Reconsidering Civil Religion,” The Immanent Frame, Social Science Research Council, accessed March 14, 2010, http://blogs.ssrc.org/tif/category/reconsidering-civil-religion/. 2. Bert Hansen, “The Birth of Yellowstone National Park”, Yellowstone National Park Archives, 1957, Box H3, Pageant. 3. Eliade’s idea of myths of origin and repetition of the power of the beginnings not only applies here, but is in itself a metaphor for the national parks: places of pristine wilderness, recreating the “new world” as it was when the white man arrived and America began. The Campfi re Pageant not only reenacted the origin of the national parks, but also how democracy “came to be” as a new reality in “America—the place, the people, the land.” These ideas are found throughout Eliade’s works. See, for example, Mircea Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion (New York: Harper & Row, 1957), 30, 68, 85, 95. 4. The names “America” or “American” are not accurate, because they encompass far more than the place or people of the United States; however, the terms have mythic power—which is central to the argument of this book— and will be used here interchangeably with “United States” and “American United States.” 5. See Lynn Ross-Bryant, “Religion and the Environment” in The Columbia Guide to Religion in American History, eds. Paul Harvey and Edward J. Blum (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 2012), 280–294. 6. National Park Service, “National Park Entrance Fees to Be Waived over Veterans Day Weekend to Inspire National Unity and Hope” [Press Release], (National Park Service, October 4, 2001). 7. Charles Long, Signifi cations: Signs, Symbols, and Images in the Interpretation of Religion (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1986), 7. 8. Thomas A. Tweed, ed., Retelling U.S. Religious History (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1997), 12. 9. Catherine Albanese, Nature Religion in America: From the Algonkian Indians to the New Age (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1990), 7–8.

252 Notes 10. Clifford Geertz, “Ethos, World View, and the Analysis of Sacred Symbols” in The Interpretation of Cultures (New York: Basic Books, 1973). 11. See, for example, Robert Orsi, Between Heaven and Earth: The Religious Worlds People Make and the Scholars Who Study Them (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 2006); Catherine Bell, “Performance,” in Critical Terms for Religious Studies, ed. Mark C. Taylor (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1998); and Nancy T. Ammerman, ed., Everyday Religion: Observing Modern Religious Lives (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 2006). 12. Sam Gill, “Play,” in Guide to the Study of Religion, ed. Willi Braun and Russell T. McCutcheon (London: Cassell, 2000). 13. William Cronon, “The Trouble with Wilderness; or, Getting Back to the Wrong Nature,” in Uncommon Ground: Rethinking the Human Place in Nature, ed. William Cronon (New York: Norton, 1996), passim. 14. Alfred North Whitehead, Science and the Modern World (New York: The Free Press, 1925), 51. 15. Cited in Paul Shepard, Man in the Landscape: A Historic View of the Esthetics of Nature (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1967), 131. 16. Clarence E. Dutton, Tertiary History of the Grand Cañon District (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1882), 141. 17. Cronon, “Trouble with Wilderness,” 80–81. 18. Richard White, “‘Are You an Environmentalist or Do You Work for a Living?’: Work and Nature,” in Cronin, Uncommon Ground, 172. 19. James Mason Hutchings, In the Heart of the Sierras (Oakland, Calif.: Pacific Press Publishing House, 1886), 87. 20. John F. Sears, Sacred Places: American Tourist Attractions in the Nineteenth Century (Amherst: Univ. of Massachusetts Press, 1989), 123. 21. Victor Turner and Edward M. Brunner, eds., The Anthropology of Experience (Urbana: Univ. of Illinois Press, 1986), 28. 22. Erik Cohen, “Pilgrimage and Tourism: Convergence and Divergence,” in Sacred Journeys: The Anthropology of Pilgrimage, ed. Alan Morinis, (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1992), 48–49. For other discussions of pilgrimage and tourism see Dean MacCannell, The Tourist: A New Theory of the Leisure Class (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1976, 1999), 15; Nelson Graburn, “Tourism: The Sacred Journey,” in Hosts and Guests: The Anthropology of Tourism, ed. Valene L. Smith (Philadelphia: Univ. of Pennsylvania, 1977), 17; Sears, Sacred Places, 5, and passim; Adrian J. Ivakhiv, Claiming Sacred Ground: Pilgrims and Politics at Glastonbury and Sedona (Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press, 2001), 231 and passim; Michael Stausberg, Religion and Tourism: Crossroads, Destinations and Encounters (London: Routledge, 2011). 23. Morinis, Sacred Journeys, 5. 24. Bruce Lincoln, Discourse and the Construction of Society: Comparative Studies of Myth, Ritual, and Classification (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1989), 89. 25. Bruce Lincoln, Theorizing Myth: Narrative, Ideology, and Scholarship (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1999), 53. 26. Morinis, Sacred Journeys, 24. 27. “The Yellowstone Act,” 1872; Joseph Grinnell and Tracy Storer, “Animal Life as an Asset of National Parks,” Science, September 1916, 377. The ”Advisory Board on Wildlife Management—Leopold Report, 1963,” written almost fi fty years later, repeated this mythic story: the parks should be maintained “in the condition that prevailed when the area was fi rst visited by the white man.” Lary M. Dilsaver, ed., America’s National Park System: The Critical Documents (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 1994), 239.

Notes

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28. Lincoln, Discourse, 24. 29. Victor Turner, Dramas, Fields, and Metaphors: Symbolic Action in Human Society (Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press, 1974), 197, 273–74, 202. 30. Ibid., 54, 203. 31. Ibid., 174. 32. Lincoln, Discourse, 90. 33. John Eade and Michael J. Sallnow, eds., Contesting the Sacred: The Anthropology of Christian Pilgrimage (New York: Routledge, 1991), 2–3. 34. David Chidester and Edward T. Linenthal, “Introduction,” in American Sacred Space, ed. David Chidester and Edward T. Linenthal (Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press, 1995), 17. 35. John Bodnar, Remaking America: Public Memory, Commemoration, and Patriotism in the Twentieth Century (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1992), 13,14, 257 n11. 36. Lincoln, Discourse, 173–74. Eade and Sallnow also point to the “contradictions between official and non-official discourses” and they argue that the “differing perceptions of the holy place” are central to understanding the dynamics of a sacred site. Eade and Sallnow, Contesting the Sacred, 12. 37. M.M. Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays by M.M. Bakhtin, ed. Michael Holquist, trans. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist (Austin: Univ. of Texas, 1981), 270–72. 38. Does this suggest that all tourist attractions are pilgrimage sites? Certainly, the analysis of any cultural phenomenon contributes to our understanding of the beliefs and values of the culture, though not all tourist centers would fashion themselves as a repository of the culture’s ideals. Certainly, the national parks would. Amusement parks and shopping malls (Six Flags, The Mall of America [which advertises itself as a vacation spot], for example) would not; however, they would still provide a significant arena for studying American social realities and values. Disneyland/World is a more complex example, because it does in significant ways claim to present American cultural values, but in a way that also denies them with its blatant artificiality. Nonetheless, I think all these tourist destinations could fruitfully be explored with the ideas of pilgrimage as a foil. An additional element of the “repository of cultural ideals” is that people journey to this space to be, in some way, transformed by it. This suggests to me that the site must institutionalize in some way the opportunity for pilgrims to undergo a transformation. In other words, to be a pilgrimage with this defi nition, the object of the tourist visit cannot be simply pleasure or recreation or relaxation. I think The Mall of America, Six Flags, or Disneyland would not meet this criterion. This is not to say that individuals would never have an experience of transformation at any of these places; rather that they are not institutionalized for this to happen. The parks come closer, even though not all who visit would be “transformed.” Finally, if pilgrimage sites are places where the ideals being held up, as well as the forms for affi rming them, are contested, parks again seem closer to pilgrimage than the other examples, where a contesting of the values would seem out of place. 39. This is a repeated motif in Jonathan Z. Smith, To Take Place: Toward Theory in Ritual (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1987). 40. Carol Christ, “Rethinking Theology and Nature,” in Weaving the Visions: New Patterns in Feminist Spirituality, ed. Carol Christ and Judith Plaskow (New York: Harper, 1989), 318. 41. Morinis, Sacred Journeys, 25. 42. Rob Shields, Places on the Margin: Alternative Geographies of Modernity (London: Routledge, 1991), 14.

254 Notes 43. Tim Ingold, “Building, Dwelling, Living: How Animals and People Make Themselves at Home in the World,” in Shifting Contexts, ed. Marilyn Strathern (London: Routledge, 1995), 39–40. 44. Turner and Brunner, The Anthropology of Experience, 11. 45. Eade and Sallnow, Contesting the Sacred, 2; Morinis, Sacred Journeys, 9. 46. Ivakhiv, Claiming Sacred Gound, 4. 47. Dilsaver, America’s National Park System, 51. This is from the 1918 “Lane Letter,” which, with the Act establishing the National Park Service two years earlier, became the “scriptures” governing the national parks. 48. See Lynn Ross-Bryant, “Ken Burns and American Mythology in The National Parks: America’s Best Idea,” Environmental Communication: A Journal of Nature and Culture, 4.4 (December 2010): 475–83 for a fuller discussion. This volume of the journal focuses on the Ken Burns fi lm. 49. Dayton Duncan and Ken Burns, The National Parks: America’s Best Idea (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2009), xv, xviii. 50. Ibid., 376.

NOTES TO THE PART 1 INTRODUCTION 1. Yosemite was ceded to the State of California by the federal government in 1864, with the proviso that it would be “held for public use, resort, and recreation . . . inalienable for all time.” Yellowstone was actually the first federal park, designated in 1872 (probably because there was no state to oversee it and also because of problems with disputed land claims in Yosemite). Yosemite High Country and Sequoia were designated national parks in 1890 and Yosemite Valley was transferred from state to federal designation in 1906. 2. Ralph Waldo Emerson, Selections from Ralph Waldo Emerson: An Organic Anthology, ed. Stephen E. Whicher (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1960), 80, 69, 65. 3. Myra Jehlen, American Incarnation: The Individual, the Nation, and the Continent (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1986), 3. 4. Barbara Novak, ed., Nature and Culture: American Landscape and Painting 1825–1875 (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1980), 7–8. 5. William Gilpin, The Central Gold Region: The Grain, Pastoral, and Gold Regions of North America (Philadelphia: Sower, Barnes, & Co., 1860), 18, 20, 65. Gilpin’s italics. 6. C.W. Dana, The Great West or the Garden of the World (Boston: Wentworth and Co., 1858), 2. Dana’s italics. 7. Matthew Baigell, Albert Bierstadt (New York: Watson-Guptill, 1981), 12. 8. See, for example, T.J. Jackson Lears, No Place of Grace: Antimodernism and the Transformation of American Culture 1880–1920 (New York: Pantheon, 1981); Mark Neumann, On the Rim: Looking for the Grand Canyon (Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota Press, 1999); Alan Trachtenberg, The Incorporation of America: Culture and Society in the Gilded Age (New York: Hill and Wang, 1982); Raymond Williams, Culture and Society, 1780–1950 (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1983); Larzer Ziff, The American 1890s: Life and Times of a Lost Generation (New York: Viking, 1966).

NOTES TO CHAPTER 1 1. Lafayette Houghton Bunnell, Discovery of the Yosemite and the Indian War of 1851 (Chicago: Fleming H. Revell, 1880), 60.

Notes

255

2. We know of other Euro-American parties who came across the valley in their explorations related to fur trapping and mining in the second quarter of the nineteenth century. They, apparently, were not interested in the scenic possibilities of the place and no development occurred. See Carl P. Russell, 100 Years in Yosemite (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1957), Ch. 1. 3. Simon Schama, Landscape and Memory (New York: Random House, 1995), 7. 4. Hans Huth, Nature and the American: Three Centuries of Changing Attitudes, 2nd ed. (Lincoln: Univ. of Nebraska Press, 1990), 149. 5. Anne Farrar Hyde, An American Vision: Far Western Landscape and National Culture, 1820–1920 (New York: New York Univ. Press, 1990), 17–18. 6. John Ruskin, Modern Painters: Of Mountain Beauty, vol. 4 (Boston: Dana Estes, 1912), 425,423. 7. Schama, Landscape and Memory, 509, 506. 8. Sears, Sacred Places, 125. 9. Baigell, Albert Bierstadt, 11, referring to Henry T. Tuckerman’s review in The Galaxy 1 (August 15, 1866). 10. Bunnell, Discovery of the Yosemite, 219. At the same time that he makes this judgment he also sees beauty in their “naturalness”—which later becomes the criterion for the park “display.” 11. Sears, Sacred Places, 125. 12. Cited in Hyde, An American Vision, 48. 13. James Mason Hutchings, “The Great Yo-Semite Valley,” California Magazine (October 1859). 14. Olive Logan, “Does It Pay to Visit Yo Semite?” Yosemite: Saga of a Century, 1864–1964 (Sierra Star Press and Yosemite Natural History Assn., 1964), 13–15. 15. Hutchings, “The Great Yo-Semite Valley,” 284. 16. Horace Greeley, Overland Journey from New York to San Francisco (New York: C.M. Saxton, Barker, & Co., 1860), 3. 17. Ibid., 257. 18. Fitz Hugh Ludlow, Heart of the Continent (New York: Hurd & Houghton, 1870), 426. 19. Thomas Starr King, Vacation among the Sierras: Yosemite in 1860, ed. John A. Hussey (San Francisco: Book Club of California, 1962), 43, 48, 49. 20. Greeley, Overland Journey, 256, 264. 21. Schama, Landscape and Memory, 190. 22. Greeley, Overland Journey, 267. 23. James Mason Hutchings, “The Mammoth Trees of California,” California Magazine (March 1859). 24. Clarence King, Mountaineering in the Sierra Nevada, ed. Francis P. Farquhar (London: Adam & Charles Black, 1947), 62, 193, 63. 25. Kate Nearpass Ogden, “Sublime Vistas and Scenic Backdrops: NineteenthCentury Painters and Photographers at Yosemite,” California History (Summer 1990): 134. 26. Peter J. Blodgett, “Visiting ‘the Realm of Wonder’: Yosemite and the Business of Tourism, 1855–1916,” California History (Summer 1990): 127. 27. Cited in Sears, Sacred Places, 133. 28. Baigell, Albert Bierstadt, 8, 9. 29. Nancy K. Anderson and Linda S. Ferber, Albert Bierstadt: Art and Enterprise (New York: Hudson Hills Press, 1990), 70–71. 30. Baigell, Albert Bierstadt, 10. 31. A marker is a designator of a sight as set apart or sacred, which can take on the power of the sight itself. See Dean MacCannell, The Tourist, 41–45.

256 Notes 32. Anderson and Ferber, Albert Bierstadt: Art and Enterprise, 25. 33. James Jackson Jarves, The Art Idea, ed. Benjamin Rowland, Jr. (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard Univ., 1960), 191. 34. Anderson and Ferber, Albert Bierstadt: Art and Enterprise, 76, 25. 35. Ibid., 201.Quotations from The Golden Era and The Round Table. 36. Baigell, Albert Bierstadt, 11. 37. King, Mountaineering in the Sierra Nevada, 259. 38. Anderson and Ferber, Albert Bierstadt: Art and Enterprise, 91–92. 39. Ibid., 105. 40. Maria Morris Hambourg, “Carleton Watkins: An Introduction ” in Douglas R. Nickel, Carleton Watkins: The Art of Perception (New York: Harry N. Abram and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 1999), 10. 41. Ibid., 16. 42. Ibid., 12. 43. Ibid., 15. 44. Peter E. Palmquist, Carleton E. Watkins, Photographer of the American West (Albuquerque: Univ. of New Mexico Press, 1983), 15. Palmquist notes, “To accomplish his objective, Watkins had to transport all the needed paraphernalia—mammoth camera (about thirty inches on a side and at least three feet in length when extended), stereoscopic camera, tripod(s), darktent, glass plates (stereo as well as mammoth size), chemicals and processing trays, numerous accessory photographic items, plus sufficient camping provisions for a sojourn of several weeks in the valley” (16). 45. Nickel, Carleton Watkins: The Art of Perception, 22. 46. Ibid., 21. 47. Ibid., 32. 48. Panoramas were originally of paintings which mechanically unrolled for an extended period of time, for example, the 1849 Mississippi Panorama. Novak, Nature and Culture, 23. 49. Cited in Nickel, Carleton Watkins: The Art of Perception, 25. 50. Nickel describes the stereo view process in this way: “Stereographic space is an optical illusion, its recession exaggerated and multilayered, lending it an oddly planar, ‘cutout’ effect. The intensity and peculiar artificiality of the sensation are encouraged by the stereoscope, whose eyepiece masks peripheral vision and concentrates attention on the kinesthetic scanning and refocusing demanded of the eyes. . . . If linear perspective is thought of as a unifying rationalization of pictorial space, the stereo image offers space deranged, its elements unpredictably aggressive or flat in their dimensionality, its field a visual patchwork of distractions and delights.” Ibid., 28. 51. Oliver Wendell Holmes, “The Stereoscope and the Stereograph,” Atlantic Monthly 3, no. 20 (1859). 52. Novak, Nature and Culture, 19. 53. “Yosemite Act,” in Dilsaver, America’s National Park System, 11. 54. The story is taken from Alfred Runte, Yosemite: The Embattled Wilderness (Lincoln: Univ. of Nebraska Press, 1990), 18–20. 55. Hambourg, “Carlton Watkins: An Introduction,”10. 56. Schama, 191. 57. Runte, Yosemite: The Embattled Wilderness, 21. 58. Cited in Carl P. Russell, “Birth of The National Park Idea” in Yosemite: Saga of a Century, 6. 59. Frederick Law Olmsted, “The Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa Big Trees, a Preliminary Report (1865),” Landscape Architecture (October 1952): 17, 22. 60. Ibid., 24.

Notes

257

NOTES TO CHAPTER 2 1. Katherine E. Early, “For the Benefit and Enjoyment of the People”: Cultural Attitudes and the Establishment of Yellowstone National Park (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown Univ. Press, 1984), 31. 2. Hansen, “The Birth of Yellowstone National Park.” 3. Although in a Helena Herald article in November 1870 Hedges says he hopes “‘our citizens will . . . secure its future appropriation to the public use,’” none of the members of this expedition mention a public park in their promotion of Yellowstone until Langford asserts the campfi re story in its mythic version in his 1904 account. Louis C. Cramton, Early History of Yellowstone National Park and Its Relation to National Park Policies (Washington, D.C.: NPS, Dept. of Interior, 1932), 19. 4. The Northern Pacific brought tourists to Yellowstone and the Old Faithful Inn was constructed in 1904. The Santa Fe Railroad and the Fred Harvey Company were largely responsible for the development of the Grand Canyon, including the El Tovar Hotel (1905), even before the area was designated as a National Monument. In Glacier the Great Northern built Glacier Park Lodge in 1913. 5. “Yellowstone Act,” Dilsaver, America’s National Park System, 28–29. 6. Although the Folsom-Cook party had gone into Yellowstone in 1869 and undoubtedly influenced the Washburn group, little attention was paid to their reports. 7. Hyde, An American Vision, 193. 8. Cramton, Early History of Yellowstone National Park, Appendix H, 101. 9. Ibid., Appendix L,111. 10. Alfred Runte, Trains of Discovery: Western Railroads and the National Parks, 4th ed., rev. ed. (Boulder, Colo.: Roberts Rinehart Publishers, 1990, 1994, 1998), 31. 11. Aubrey L. Haines, The Yellowstone Story: A History of Our First National Park, rev. ed., vol. 1 (Boulder: Univ. Press of Colorado, 1996, 1997), 137. 12. Early, “For the Benefit of the People,” 64. 13. Alfred Runte, National Parks: The American Experience, 3rd ed. (Lincoln: Univ. of Nebraska Press, 1987), 39. 14. Joni Louise Kinsey, “Thomas Moran’s Surveys of Yellowstone and the Grand Canyon: The Coalition of Art, Business, and Government,” in Splendors of the American West: Thomas Moran’s Art of the Grand Canyon and Yellowstone, ed. Anne R. Morand (Birmingham, Ala.: Birmingham Museum of Art, 1990), 29, 34. 15. Cecelia Tichi, Embodiment of a Nation: Human Form in American Places (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 2001), 103. 16. Cited in Early, “For the Benefit of the People,” 30, 32. 17. Paul Schullery, Searching for Yellowstone: Ecology and Wonder in the Last Wilderness (Helena: Montana Historical Society Press, 2004), 55. 18. Rudyard Kipling, “Kipling among the Geysers,” The American West (July/ August 1978): 26, 59, 61. 19. Early, For the Benefit of the People, 66. 20. Joshua Jones, August 1, 1996, accessed March 2, 2007, http:www. xroads. virginia.edu. 21. Cited in Schullery, Searching for Yellowstone, 289 n. 19. 22. Andrew Wilton and Tim Barringer, American Sublime: Landscape Painting in the United States 1820–1880 (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 2002), 33, 30. 23. Cited in Neumann, On the Rim, 82.

258 Notes 24. Hyde, An American Vision, 196. 25. Mary Panzer, “Great Pictures of the 1871 Expedition: Thomas Moran, William Henry Jackson, and The Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone,” in Morand, Splendors of the American West, 43. 26. Cited in Wilton and Barringer, American Sublime, 31. 27. Hyde, An American Vision, 197. 28. Kinsey, “Thomas Moran’s Surveys of Yellowstone and the Grand Canyon,” 29. 29. Hyde, An American Vision, 18. 30. Neumann, On the Rim, 97. 31. Wilton and Barringer, American Sublime, 35. 32. Early, “For the Benefit of the People,” 52, 54–55, 55. 33. Hyde, An American Vision, 196. 34. Cited in Early, “For the Benefit of the People,” 26. 35. Cited in Cramton, 102–3. 36. Runte, Trains of Discovery, 19–20. 37. Joni Louise Kinsey, Thomas Moran and the Surveying of the American West (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1992), 60. 38. Kinsey, “Thomas Moran’s Surveys of Yellowstone and the Grand Canyon,” 34. 39. Cited in Early, “For the Benefit of the People,” 41. 40. Cited in Kinsey, “Thomas Moran’s Surveys of Yellowstone and the Grand Canyon,” 33. 41. Cited in Early, “For the Benefit of the People,” 42–43. 42. Runte, National Parks: The American Experience, 43, 44. 43. Novak, Nature and Culture, 180. 44. Elizabeth McKinsey, Niagara Falls: Icon of the American Sublime (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1985), 18. 45. Mary Bradshaw Richards, Camping out in the Yellowstone 1882, ed. William W. Slaughter (Salt Lake City: Univ. of Utah Press, 1994), 105. 46. Ibid., 89, 90. 47. Hyde, An American Vision, 251. 48. Preludes to this are seen in the Adirondack “camps” in the 1880s and earlier in the Philosophy Camps that included Emerson in the 1850s. See Huth, Nature and the American, 96–98. 49. Maurice English, ed., The Testament of Stone (Evanston: Northwestern Univ. Press, 1963), 29, 60–61. 50. David S. Andrew, Louis Sullivan and the Polemics of Modern Architecture (Urbana: Univ. of Illinois Press, 1985), 16, 145–46. 51. Gwendolyn Wright, Building the Dream: A Social History of Housing in America (New York: Pantheon, 1981), 162. 52. Hyde, An American Vision, 259. 53. Through Wonderland, (Northern Pacific Railway, 1910), 19. 54. Thomas D. Murphy, Three Wonderlands of the American West (Boston: The Page Co., 1912), 10. 55. Cited in Hyde, An American Vision, 260. 56. Ibid., 258. 57. Sears, Sacred Place, 170–80. 58. Martha Cruikshank, Notes on the Yellowstone Park (1883). Yellowstone National Park Archives. 59. Gary Ferguson, The Great Divide: The Rocky Mountains in the American Mind (New York: W.W. Norton, 2004), 137–38. 60. Tichi, Embodiment of a Nation, 102, 109, 114. 61. Ibid., 111, 112, 113.

Notes

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62. John Muir, Nature Writings (New York: The Library of America, 1997), 746, 747–48. 63. Ibid., 747. 64. Tichi, Embodiment of a Nation, 119.

NOTES TO THE PART II INTRODUCTION 1. Cited in Neumann, On the Rim, 98. 2. Charles Lummis, A Tramp across the Continent (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1892), 142, 245. 3. Marguerite S. Shaffer, “Seeing America First: The Search for Identity in the Tourist Landscape,” in Seeing and Being Seen: Tourism in the American West, ed. David M. Wrobel and Patrick T. Long (Lawrence: Univ. of Kansas, 2001), 165. 4. Marguerite S. Shaffer, “Negotiating National Identity: Western Tourism and ‘See America First’,” in Reopening the American West, ed. Hal Rothman (Tucson: Univ. of Arizona Press, 1998), 122,127. 5. Cited in Neumann, On the Rim, 97. 6. Alan Trachtenberg, The Incorporation of America: Culture and Society in the Gilded Age (New York: Hill and Wang, 1982), 4–5. 7. Albanese, Nature Religion in America, 120. 8. Lears, No Place of Grace, xiii, 7. 9. Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Letters and Social Aims, ed. Ronald A. Bosco, vol. VIII (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard Univ., 2010), 121, 223, 218. 10. Walt Whitman, “Democratic Vistas,” in Walt Whitman: Complete Poetry and Collected Prose (New York: Literary Classics of the U.S., 1982), 962, 988–92. 11. See, e.g., Louis Sullivan, “What Is Architecture: A Study in the American People of Today,” in The Testament of Stone: Themes of Idealism and Indignation from the Writings of Louis Sullivan, ed. Maurice English (Evanston: Northwestern Univ. Press, 1963). 12. William James, “What Makes a Life Significant,” in On Some of Life’s Ideals (New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1890, 1899), 86, 61, 60. 13. Albanese, Nature Religion, see Ch. 4 passim. 14. Cited in Philip J. Deloria, Playing Indian (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1998), 96. 15. Lears, No Place of Grace, 7. 16. Deloria, Playing Indian, 102.

NOTES TO CHAPTER 3 1. 2. 3. 4.

Neumann, On the Rim, 98. Cited in Hyde, An American Vision, 51. Cited in ibid., 270. Charles Dudley Warner, “1891: The Heart of the Desert,” in The Grand Canyon: Early Impressions, ed. Paul Schullery (Boulder: Colorado Associated Univ. Press, 1981), 45. 5. Dutton, Tertiary History, 141–42. 6. Marta Weigle and Barbara A. Babcock, eds., The Great Southwest of the Fred Harvey Company and the Santa Fe Railway (Phoenix: The Heard Museum, 1996), 11.

260 Notes 7. See Robert Sterling Yard, The Book of the National Parks (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1919), 349. He discusses the various obstacles the effort encountered in the form of “politics, private interests, and the deliberation of governmental procedure.” 8. Weigle and Babcock, The Great Southwest, 11. 9. The copy accompanying the picture asserted the impossibility of containing the Canyon in a picture—“Nature’s masterpiece” must be seen fi rsthand. 10. Leah Dilworth, Imagining Indians in the Southwest: Persistent Visions of a Primitive Past (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1992), 16. 11. Ibid., 78–79, 3. 12. MacCannell, The Tourist, 3. 13. Dilworth, Imagining Indians, 4. 14. George Wharton James, The Grand Canyon of Arizona: How to See It (Boston: Little, Brown, 1910), 121. 15. George Wharton James, What the White Race May Learn from the Indian (Chicago: Forbes & Co., 1908), 251, 254, 49. James’ italics. 16. Dilworth, Imagining Indians, 136–37. 17. Trachtenberg, The Incorporation of America, 27. 18. Edward W. Said, Orientalism (New York: Pantheon, 1978), 5, 3. 19. Hyde, An American Vision, 234. 20. Earl Pomeroy, In Search of the Golden West: The Tourist in Western America (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1957), 38. 21. Weigle and Babcock, The Great Southwest, 6. 22. G.W. James, What the White Race May Learn from the Indian, 54–55. 23. Cited in Weigle and Babcock, The Great Southwest, 7. 24. Ibid. 25. Hyde, An American Vision, 240. 26. Diana F. Pardue, “Marketing Ethnography: The Fred Harvey Indian Department and George A. Dorsey,” in Weigle and Babcock, The Great Southwest, 102. 27. David Gebhard, “Architecture and the Fred Harvey Houses: The Alvarado and La Fonda,” New Mexico Architecture 6, no. 1 and 2 (1964): 18. 28. Hyde, An American Vision, 276. 29. G.W. James, The Grand Canyon of Arizona, 118–22, 31. 30. MacCannell, The Tourist, 101. 31. Cited in Dilworth, Imagining Indians, 89–90. 32. Cited in Neumann, On the Rim, 37. 33. Murphy, Three Wonderlands, 132. 34. Charles Lummis, “The Greatest Thing in the World,” in Grand Canyon of Arizona, (Chicago: Passenger Department of the Santa Fe, 1902), 35. Note the reference not to the Orient, but to Europe. 35. G.W. James, The Grand Canyon of Arizona, 127, 55. 36. William C. Tweed, Laura E. Spoulliere, and Henry G. Law, National Park Service Rustic Architecture, 1916–1942, online book: http://www.cr.nps. gov/history/online_books/rusticarch/ (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1977), part 1, 5. 37. Shepard, Man in the Landscape, 251, 253. 38. Wilton and Barringer, American Sublime, 34, 35. 39. Sears, Sacred Places, 42. 40. Cited in Neumann, On the Rim, 77. See also 68–84. 41. Cited in Ibid., 70. 42. Kinsey, Thomas Moran and the Surveying of the American West, 16, 111. 43. J.W. Powell, “The Scientific Explorer,” in The Grand Canyon of Arizona: Being a Book of Words from Many Pens, About the Grand Canyon of the

Notes

44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55.

56.

57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71.

72. 73.

261

Colorado River in Arizona, (Chicago: Passenger Dept. of the Santa Fe, 1902), 32, 29. In Titan of Chasms, a Santa Fe publication that included only the fi rst three essays of Grand Canyon of Arizona—by Higgins, Powell, and Lummis—the section “As Seen by an Artist” is omitted, along with a section on Spanish explorers and Zunis and a section on a Mormon couple he comes across. Presumably this was to save space, but it is interesting to see what was considered less important. Kinsey, Thomas Moran and the Surveying of the American West, 111. Neumann, On the Rim, 80. Dutton, Tertiary History of the Grand Cañon District, 95. Neumann, On the Rim, 82. Richard Grusin, Culture, Technology, and the Creation of America’s National Parks (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2004), 103. Dutton, Tertiary History of the Grand Cañon District, 139, 141, 145, 150. Grusin, Culture, Technology and National Parks, 128, 129. Ibid., 148. Lummis, A Tramp across the Continent, 244. Harriet Monroe, “Its Ineffable Beauty,” in The Grand Canyon of Arizona: Being a Book of Words, 50, 55. Theodore Roosevelt, “1903: Remarks to the People of Arizona,” in The Grand Canyon: Early Impressions, ed. Paul Schullery (Boulder: Colorado Associated Univ. Press, 1981), 101–2. Harriet Monroe, “1899: The Grand Canyon of the Colorado,” in Schullery, The Grand Canyon: Early Impressions, 50. Her essay was fi rst published in the Atlantic Monthly following her visit in 1899. When a version of the essay appeared in 1902 in the Santa Fe Railroad publication Grand Canyon of Arizona: Being a Book of Words, these comments were not included. Roosevelt, “1903: Remarks,” 102. The 1906 version of Grand Canyon of Arizona: Being a Book of Words included part of the speech in its “Comments” section (which could be called testimonials) at the end of the book. They did not, however, include these comments. Dilworth, Imagining Indians, 82. Weigle and Babcock, The Great Southwest, 3. Hyde, An American Vision, 272. Neumann, On the Rim, 27. Murphy, Three Wonderlands, 133. Powell named a clear stream “Bright Angel” and the name is used in the Canyon to describe both trails and lodging. Hyde, An American Vision, 174–75. Neumann, On the Rim, 27. Cited in Jeff rey Limerick, Nancy Ferguson, and Richard Oliver, America’s Grand Resort Hotels (New York: Pantheon, 1979), 127. Cited in Hyde, An American Vision, 276. Cited in Neumann, On the Rim, 27. Sears, Sacred Places, 8. Neumann, On the Rim, 32, 29. The Grand Canyon of Arizona: Being a Book of Words, 126. See Lois W. Banner, American Beauty (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1983). Gender was even more deemphasized at dude ranches. As Ferguson notes, “On matters of fashion alone the dude ranch offered these women an astonishing breath of fresh air, requiring not corsets and crinoline and petticoats, but jeans and boots and Stetson hats.” Ferguson, The Great Divide, 210. Huth, Nature and the American, 182. Neumann, On the Rim, 33.

262

Notes

74. See Lesley Poling-Kempes, The Harvey Girls: Women Who Opened the West (New York: Paragon, 1989) and Juddi Morris, The Harvey Girls: The Women Who Civilized the West (New York: Walker, 1994). 75. Grand Canyon Archives, GRCA 75910. The service was a popular national radio broadcast for twenty-five years. 76. Grand Canyon Archives, GRCA 75909 Folder 1. In spite of the universality of this message, in the 1950s there was an attempt by several Christian groups to build a million dollar building called “The Shrine of the Ages Chapel” on the south rim. Their claim was, “In an area where few can deny the existence of a supreme being because of the physical magnitude of His creation, there is no place set aside to His honor and worship.” Many responded that the Canyon was the Shrine of the Ages and quite sufficient for worship. After a good deal of contestation, including Director Conrad Wirth affi rming such a project was a proper use for a national park, a smaller chapel was built away from the rim. See also “Shrine of the Ages” File. 77. Fred Harvey, Trails, Drives, and Saddle Horses (Grand Canyon, Ariz.: El Tovar Hotel, 1910). 78. Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railway Co., Grand Canyon Outings (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1915?). 79. Theodore Roosevelt, The Strenuous Life (New York: The Century Co., 1901), 7, 252, 254. 80. See Frederick Jackson Turner, “The Significance of the Frontier in American History,” in History, Frontier, and Section (Albuquerque: Univ. of New Mexico Press, 1993). 81. Gifford Pinchot, often, perhaps overly, contrasted with John Muir, served as Roosevelt’s fi rst Chief of the U.S. Forest Service. 82. Theodore Roosevelt, Outdoor Pastimes of an American Hunter (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1908), 322. 83. Marguerite S. Shaffer, See America First: Tourism and National Identity, 1880–1940 (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 2001), 63. 84. John F. Reiger, ed., The Passing of the Great West: Selected Papers of George Bird Grinnell (New York: Winchester Press, 1972), 144, 151. 85. Cited in Runte, Trains of Discovery (1990, 1994, 1998), 34. 86. Hyde, An American Vision, 282. 87. Cited in Gerald A. Diettert, Grinnell’s Glacier: George Bird Grinnell and Glacier National Park (Missoula, Mont.: Mountain Press Publishing Co., 1992), 107. 88. George Bird Grinnell, ed., Brief History of the Boone and Crockett Club (New York: Forest & Stream, 1910), 4–5. 89. Historian Mark Spence notes “The term Blackfeet . . . specifically refers to the Pikuni and Piegan Indians residing on the Blackfeet reservation in northern Montana who officially refer to themselves as the Blackfeet Nation.” They are part of the Blackfoot Confederacy. “Although the Blackfeet maintain an especially deep attachment to the mountains that border their reservation, they are not the only native group with a strong connection to the region.” Mark David Spence, Dispossessing the Wilderness: Indian Removal and the Making of the National Parks (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1999), 72, 73. Some commentators use the term “Blackfoot” as equivalent to “Blackfeet.” I have retained Spence’s usage. 90. Spence, Dispossessing the Wilderness, 78. 91. George Bird Grinnell, Blackfoot Lodge Tales: The Story of a Prairie People (Williamstown, Mass.: Corner House Publishers, 1892, 1972), ix, xii. 92. Ibid., vii. 93. Cited in Spence, Dispossessing the Wilderness, 78.

Notes 94. 95. 96. 97. 98. 99. 100. 101. 102. 103. 104. 105. 106. 107. 108.

109. 110. 111. 112. 113. 114. 115. 116. 117. 118.

263

Hyde, An American Vision, 285, 83–84. Cited in Shaffer, See America First, 78, 63, 90. Ibid., 84. Hyde, An American Vision, 284. Ibid., 290. Shaffer, See America First, 68. Limerick, Ferguson, and Oliver, America’s Grand Resort Hotels, 139. Cited in C.W. Buchholtz, Man in Glacier (West Glacier, Mont.: Glacier National History Association, 1976), 56. Louis S. Warren, The Hunter’s Game: Poachers and Conservationists in Twentieth-Century America (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1997), 144. Cited in Hyde, An American Vision, 286. Spence, Dispossessing the Wilderness, 87. Shaffer, See America First, 69; Robert H. Keller and Michael F. Turek, American Indians and National Parks (Tucson: Univ. of Arizona Press, 1998), 57. Cited in Shaffer, See America First, 85. Mary Roberts Rinehart, Through Glacier Park in 1915 (Boulder, Colo.: Roberts Rinehart, 1983), 51, 25. Cited in Shaffer, See America First, 88. Shaffer uses this quotation to argue the feminization of urban living and the masculinization of wilderness. Although this is surely Roosevelt’s intent, Dillon seems to be moving beyond this, recognizing the equal presence of men and women both in the civilized and wilderness modes. Rinehart, Through Glacier Park, 28, 61. Cited in Spence, Dispossessing the Wilderness, 93. Ibid., 106. Cited in Keller and Turek, American Indians and National Parks, 158. Spence, Dispossessing the Wilderness, 150, 109. Cited in ibid., 112. Cited in ibid., 59–60. Philip Burnham, Indian Country, God’s Country: Native Americans and the National Parks (Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 2000), 23. Spence, Dispossessing the Wilderness, 60. Dilworth, Imagining Indians, 121.

NOTES TO CHAPTER 4 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.

Shaffer, See America First, 26–30. See Turner, History, Frontier, and Section. Buchholtz, Rocky Mountain National Park, 115. Michael Frome, Whose Woods These Are: The Story of the National Forests (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1962), 49. Gifford Pinchot, Breaking New Ground, Commemorative ed. (Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 1998), 100,103. Char Miller, Gifford Pinchot and the Making of Modern Environmentalism (Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 2001), 152. Muir, Nature Writings, 721. The second Forestry Congress was called in 1905 and following Pinchot’s lead unanimously recommended the Forest Reserves be transferred to Agriculture. John Lacey noted they should be housed not in “a department whose business it is to pass the title away to individuals, but to a department that will hold on to this land.” Frome, Whose Woods These Are, 60.

264

Notes

9. Gifford Pinchot, The Fight for Conservation (New York: Doubleday, Page, & Co., 1910), 45, 81, 121. 10. Pinchot’s view of wise use conservation never changed, nor did his loyalty to the Forest Service. However, that support did not keep him from criticizing the Bureau for what he saw as supporting private industry in destructive forestry practices; and eventually he came to the view that even wise use conservation depended on the government’s controlling forest lands rather than leaving it to private parties. In affi rming free enterprise, but condemning “Concentrated Wealth,” he was accused by some of being a socialist. See Miller, Gifford Pinchot, 278–80; Pinchot, Breaking New Ground, 508–9; and Char Miller and V. Alaric Sample, “Gifford Pinchot and the Conservation Spirit,” in Pinchot, Breaking New Ground, xvi. 11. Alfred Runte, National Parks, 76, 77. 12. Ibid., 71. 13. David Harmon, Francis P. McManamon, and Dwight T. Pitcaithley, eds., The Antiquities Act: A Century of American Archaeology, Historic Preservation, and Nature Conservation (Tucson: Univ. of Arizona Press, 2006), 6. 14. U.S. Congress, “American Antiquities Act of 1906” accessed April 6, 2007, http://www.cr.nps.gov/local-law-anti1906.htm. 15. The four parks under the management of the Army in 1915 were Yellowstone, Yosemite, General Grant, and Sequoia. 16. Kathy S. Mason, Natural Museums: U.S. National Parks, 1872–1916 (East Lansing: Michigan State Univ. Press, 2004), 71. 17. Cited in Roderick Frazier Nash, Wilderness and the American Mind, 4th ed. (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 2001), 171. Apart from specific controversy over whether the land would be better used to bring water and power to the people of San Francisco or to provide a reserved area for the pleasure of the people of the United States, several other issues underlay the discussion and are at least partly responsible for the passage of the Act: San Francisco’s devastating fi re in 1906; the election of Woodrow Wilson in 1912 with the help of California voters; and the political issue of whether control of hydroelectric resources should be private (Pacific Gas and Electric) or public. See Nash, Ch. 10. 18. Cited in Ibid., 167, 177. 19. Muir, Nature Writings, 114, 117. 20. Robert Underwood Johnson, “The Hetch Hetchy Scheme: Why It Should Not Be Rushed through the Extra Session: An Open Letter to the American People,” (1913). 21. Ibid., 159. 22. J. Horace McFarland, “Are National Parks Worth While?” The Sierra Club Bulletin VIII (1912): 237. 23. Nash, Wilderness and the American Mind, 180–81. 24. Cited in Richard West Sellars, Preserving Nature in the National Parks: A History, new preface and epilogue, 2009 ed. (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1997, 1999), 32, 34, 33. 25. Shaffer, See America First, 97. 26. Robert Sterling Yard, National Parks Portfolio, “Introduction” (Washington, D.C.: Dept. of the Interior, 1916). 27. Shaffer, See America First, 34. 28. Yard, National Parks Portfolio, “Introduction.” 29. Ibid., “Yellowstone.” 30. Shaffer, See America First, 104. 31. Sellars, Preserving Nature in the National Parks, 35, 36.

Notes

265

32. In 1918 Secretary of the Interior Franklin Lane wrote a letter to Stephen Mather outlining the administrative policy of the NPS. The letter was clearly intended to be a statement to the public, and Kathy Mason says it is reasonable to assume that “Mather was probably the original source of these ideas.” Mason, Natural Museums, 91 n.12. 33. “Act to Establish a National Park Service,” Dilsaver, America’s National Park System, 46–47. 34. “Secretary Lane’s Letter on National Park Management,” Dilsaver, America’s National Park System,”48–52. 35. Monuments already under the control of the Forest Service remained there until 1933 when FDR consolidated various preserves, including battlefields and national monuments under Interior. Mason, Natural Museums, 74. A split again occurred in 2000 when President Clinton designated numerous national monuments and placed fi fteen of them under the Bureau of Land Management. 36. Sellars, Preserving Nature in the National Parks, 57. 37. Cited in Ibid., 44. 38. Horace M. Albright and Frank J. Taylor, “Oh, Ranger!” (Stanford: Stanford Univ. Press, 1929), 125. 39. Enos A. Mills, Your National Parks (Boston: Houghton Miffl in, 1917), xi, 3. 40. Ibid., 333, 9, 85, xii, 84, 79, 81, 82. 41. Ibid., ix, vii, 3, 20. 42. Ibid., 20–21, 28, 3. 43. Yard, The Book of the National Parks, 20. 44. Ibid., 24. 45. Ibid. 46. Mason, Natural Museums, 2. 47. Runte, National Parks, 110. 48. Linda Wedel Greene, Historical Narrative, vol. 1 of Yosemite: The Park and Its Resources (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Dept. of the Interior, 1987), 361. 49. Shaffer, See America First, 108. 50. Ibid. 51. Cited in Anne Farrar Hyde, “From Stagecoach to Packard Twin Six: Yosemite and the Changing Face of Tourism, 1880–1930,” California History 69, no. 2 (Summer 1990): 165, 163. 52. Shaffer, “Negotiating National Identity,” 144. 53. Frank E. Brimmer, “Autocamping—the Fastest-Growing Sport,” The Outlook 137, no. 11 (1924): 437. 54. Shaffer, “Negotiating National Identity,” 137–38. 55. Brimmer, “Autocamping,” 439. 56. Shaffer, “Seeing America First,” 174, 181. 57. Peter J. Schmitt, Back to Nature: The Arcadian Myth in Urban America (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1969) , 176. 58. The Yellowstone Trail was begun in 1912 by South Dakota businessmen to make travel in their state more accessible, and then extended to Yellowstone National Park for tourists. It soon became the fi rst continental road—Plymouth Rock to Puget Sound. Its name shows the significance of the national parks in the development of the highway transportation system. 59. Sinclair Lewis, Free Air (New York: Grosset & Dunlop, 1919), 138–40. 60. Hal Rothman, Devil’s Bargains: Tourism in the Twentieth-Century American West (Lawrence: Univ. Press of Kansas, 1998), 144. 61. Kathleen Stewart, A Space on the Side of the Road: Cultural Poetics in an “Other” America (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1996), 3, 7.

266 Notes 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70.

71. 72. 73. 74. 75. 76. 77.

78. 79. 80. 81. 82. 83. 84. 85. 86. 87. 88. 89. 90. 91. 92.

Rothman, Devil’s Bargains, 145, 147, 149. Ibid., 166. Shaffer, “Seeing America First,” 171, 176. Bodnar, Remaking America, 16. See also Shaffer, “Seeing America First,” 175–76. Shaffer, See America First, 127. Albright and Taylor, “Oh, Ranger!” 21. Sanford E. Demars, The Tourist in Yosemite, 1855–1985 (Salt Lake City: Univ. of Utah Press, 1991), 68. Mary Curry Tresidder, “Early Days at Camp Curry,” in Yosemite: Saga of a Century, 1864–1964 (Sierra Star Press and Yosemite Natural History Assn., 1964), 22. Runte, Yosemite, 93, 97. In 1915, for example, Curry won approval for a bowling alley, billiard and pool tables; the operation of a motion-picture projector and a stereopticon; the sale of fruit, bread, pastry, and tobacco; permission to charge for dancing; and the sale of music and records published by the company (103). Linda Greene, while noting the same tension between the Currys and Interior attributes the ending of the fi refall “ostensibly to its artificiality and the publicity surrounding it, which did not seem harmonious with national park interests.” Greene, Yosemite: The Park and Its Resources. National Park Service, “Yosemite Valley Cultural Landscape Report” (October 1994). Albright and Taylor, “Oh, Ranger!” 33. File No. 700.11, Yellowstone National Park Archives. Cited in Demars, The Tourist in Yosemite, 97, 99. Shirley Sargent, Yosemite: The First 100 Years 1890–1990 (Yosemite: Yosemite Park & Curry Co., 1988), 52. National Park Service, “Yosemite Valley Cultural Landscape Report.” Alston Chase, Playing God in Yellowstone: The Destruction of America’s First National Park (San Diego: Harcourt Brace & Co., Harvest Books, 1987), 155. The Craighead study explores the dilemmas of this decision. See John J. Craighead and Frank C. Craighead, The Grizzly Bears of Yellowstone (Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 1995). Runte, Yosemite, 140. Albright and Taylor, “Oh, Ranger!” 81, 87, 85. Freeman Tilden, The National Parks: What They Mean to You and Me (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1951). Runte, Yosemite, 145. Ibid., 156. Spence, Dispossessing the Wilderness, 124. Demars, The Tourist in Yosemite, 99. Keller and Turek, American Indians and National Parks, 235. Yellowstone Archives, Box K 15, Pageants. It seems likely that Holme wrote the “Allegory” part of “Sanctuary,” although he was not involved in its production. Hansen, “The Birth of Yellowstone National Park.” Cited in Hyde, “From Stagecoach to Packard Twin Six,” 166. David M. Steele, Going Abroad Overland: Studies of Places and People in the Far West (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1917), 163–64, 172. Demars, The Tourist in Yosemite, 106. Sargent, Yosemite, 80. Annual Report of Stephen Mather, Director of the National Park Service, 1921.

Notes

267

93. Greene, for example, says in 1916 Mather “determined to provide park visitors with information on natural and historical features. Educational programs were part of his agenda from the beginning.” Greene, Yosemite, 595. 94. Runte establishes Grinnell as the originator of the educational programs rather than Mather by showing him pushing Mather to establish natural history positions in the parks from 1917 on, with positions fi nally being established in Yosemite in 1920. Runte, Yosemite, 114–17. 95. Joseph Grinnell and Tracy Storer, “Animal Life as an Asset of National Parks,” Science (September 1916): 376, 377.

NOTES TO THE PART III INTRODUCTION 1. Phillip Brick, “Arnold and Gottlieb Publish the Wise Use Agenda” (Salem Press, 2006), Accessed March 12, 2010, . 2. Stephen Fox, John Muir and His Legacy: The American Conservation Movement (Boston: Little, Brown, 1981), 358–59. 3. See, for example, Wade Clark Roof, Spiritual Marketplace: Baby Boomers and the Remaking of American Religion (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 2001) and Robert Wuthnow, After Heaven (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1998). 4. See for example Albanese, Nature Religion in America. 5. Roderick Frazier Nash, “The American Invention of National Parks,” American Quarterly 22, no. 3 (1970): 726. 6. The continuing power of this book to articulate this American dream is seen in the fact that it went into new editions in 1973, 1982, and 2001. 7. Bron Taylor, Dark Green Religion: Nature Spirituality and the Planetary Future (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 2009).

NOTES TO CHAPTER 5 1. Bodnar, Remaking America, 204. 2. Runte, Yosemite, 115–16. 3. George M. Wright, Joseph S. Dixon, Ben H. Thompson, “Fauna of the National Parks of the United States: A Preliminary Survey of Faunal Relations in National Parks,” in Fauna Series (Washington, DC: U.S. Dept. of the Interior, NPS, 1933), 1. 4. Ibid. 5. Horace M. Albright, “The Everlasting Wilderness,” The Saturday Evening Post, September 29, 1928, 28. 6. The dominant tone in the parks generally and Yosemite specifically at this time is illustrated by the “Pageant of Progress” in Yosemite June 10, 1933 to celebrate the completion and dedication of the Wawona Tunnel as a sign of the continuing growth and success of the national parks. Yosemite National Park Archives. 7. Wright, Dixon, and Thompson, “Fauna of the National Parks,” 23. 8. See, for example, William J. Robbins, Chairman, “A Report by the Advisory Committee to the National Park Service on Research of the National Academy of Sciences—National Research Council,” (Washington, D.C.: National Academy of Sciences, 1963), 20. 9. Wright, Dixon, and Thompson, “Fauna of the National Parks,” 12. 10. Runte, Yosemite, 166.

268 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17.

18.

19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26.

27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36.

Notes Wright, Dixon, and Thompson, “Fauna of the National Parks,” 10, 113. Ibid., 147, 19. Ibid., 19–20. “Research in the National Parks,” in Dilsaver, America’s National Park System, 122, 125, 127. Ibid., 87–88. Sellars, Preserving Nature in the National Parks, 121–22. Alfred Runte, National Parks, 134–36. Ironically, in later years Everglades came to be seen as an example of human destruction in the parks, both internally and externally, through pesticide use and water diversion, e.g. See F. Fraser Darling and Noel D. Eichorn, Man and Nature in the National Parks: Refl ections on Policy, 2nd ed. (Washington, D.C.: The Conservation Foundation, 1967, 1969), 84. Sellars, Preserving Nature in the National Parks, 160–61. In July of 1929, 2,000 visitors were reported at the Yosemite bear show. Runte, Yosemite, 150. An Interpretation report for 1936–1939 set the number of people attending a “lecture” at the Grizzly Bear Grounds at Yellowstone at 1,200–1,500. Yellowstone Archives, File 700.11. Ibid., 195–96. “Material of Use in Mission 66 Planning,” Yellowstone National Park Archives, Sept. 1955. Conrad L. Wirth, “Annual Report of the Director National Park Service to the Secretary of the Interior,” (Washington, D.C.: Dept. of the Interior, 1960), 279. Sellars, Preserving Nature in the National Parks, 185–87. For example, it was during this period that all lodging was removed from Rocky Mountain National Park because the tourist town of Estes Park was nearby. Sellars, Preserving Nature in the National Parks, 167–68. Albright’s ideas did not change over time; in 1972 he said to Director Hartzog, “Yellowstone was not created to preserve an ‘ecosystem,’” 204. Conrad L. Wirth, Parks, Politics, and the People (Norman: Univ. of Oklahoma Press, 1980), 258. National Parks went through several revisions as the Park System grew, and even a revision by a different author, Paul Schullery, in 1986. That most of Tilden’s original language persists even into the 1986 version shows the power he had in identifying the values of the parks—as well as the fact that those values continued to inform Park Service for some time. Freeman Tilden, The National Parks, Revised and enlarged ed. (New York: Knopf, 1968), 7, 8. Ibid., 22. Freeman Tilden, Interpreting Our Heritage: Principles and Practices for Visitor Services in Parks, Museums, and Historic Places (Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina, 1957), 23, 27. Tilden, The National Parks, 1968, 32,552. Tilden, Interpreting Our Heritage, 100. Conrad L. Wirth, ed., America’s Wonderlands: The Scenic National Parks and Monuments of the United States (Washington, D.C.: National Geographic Society, 1959), 16, 54. Ibid., 19. Tilden, The National Parks, 1968, iii. The ungulate crisis in Yellowstone is well documented in Chase, Playing God in Yellowstone. See “The Range.” Sellars, Preserving Nature in the National Parks, 217.

Notes

269

37. Dilsaver, America’s National Park System, 237, 239, 240. 38. Ibid., 241, 245. 39. Cited in Ibid., 239. Frederick Clements’ theory of succession and climax communities itself comes under question with the questioning of the assumption that “disturbance was a rare, external event, not an intrinsic property of the community” and the assertion that natural ecosystems are not inherently self-regulating. Nancy Langston, Forest Dreams, Forest Nightmares: The Paradox of Old Growth in the Inland West (Seattle: Univ. of Washington Press, 1995), 127, 275. 40. Robbins, “A Report by the Advisory Committee” 17, 18, 64. Emphasis in the report. 41. Ibid., 57, 32, 31. 42. Ibid., 19. 43. National Park Service, “Administrative Policies for the National Parks and National Monuments of Scientific Significance (Natural Area Category),” (Washington D.C.: U.S. Dept. of the Interior, 1967), 60–61. Udall’s memorandum of July 10, 1964 is included as Appendix B in this report. 44. Ibid., 11,12. 45. Ibid., 16, 22–26. 46. Stephen Mather, “Ideals of Policy of the National Park Service” in Ansel F. Hall, ed., Handbook of Yosemite National Park (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1921), 79. 47. ”Administrative Policies for the National Parks and National Monuments,” 17. 48. Cited in Sellars, Preserving Nature in the National Parks, 248–49. Sellars notes that Leopold reconfi rmed this position in 1983 in relation to elk damaging aspen. 49. See, for example, Yellowstone National Park, “Yellowstone’s Northern Range: Complexity and Change in a Wildland Ecosystem,” (Mammoth Hot Springs, Wyo.: NPS, 1997), which provides an analysis of range conditions under natural regulation and concludes this is the best option. 50. Chase, Playing God in Yellowstone, 63. 51. “Current Conversations in Ungulate Management in the National Park Service,” George Wright Society Conference, March 14–18, 2011. Especially relevant were presentations by Therese Johnson, “Managing Elk in the Absence of an Intact Ecosystem: Challenges in Rocky Mountain National Park” and Ryan Monello,“The Re-emergence of Active Management Programs for Abundant Ungulate Populations in National Park Units.” 52. Sellars, Preserving Nature in the National Parks, 258. 53. David J. Simon, To Preserve Unimpaired: The Challenge of Protecting Park Resources, vol. 1 of Investing in Park Futures: A Blueprint for Tomorrow, vol. 1 (Washington, D.C.: National Parks and Conservation Association, 1988), 29. 54. See “Yellowstone Fires—20 Years Later,” Greater Yellowstone Advocate 25, no. 3 (2008) and Mary Ann Franke, “Yellowstone in the Afterglow: Lessons from the Fires,” (Mammoth Hot Springs, Wyo.: Yellowstone Center for Resources, YNP, 2000). 55. Chase, Playing God in Yellowstone, 46, 208. 56. Yosemite National Park Archives, #9984. 57. Howard Stagner, “Preservation of Natural and Wilderness Values in the National Parks,” National Parks Magazine 31 (1957): 136. 58. Dilsaver, America’s National Park System, 242. 59. ”Administrative Policies for the National Parks and National Monuments,” 37.

270 Notes 60. Darling and Eichorn, Man and Nature in the National Parks, 20, 36. 61. Kathy Sferra and Laura Loomis, Parks and People: A Natural Relationship: Visitor Use of the National Parks, vol. 3 of Investing in Park Futures, 32. Emphasis in report. 62. Darling and Eichorn, Man and Nature in the National Parks, 32, 45–46, 60. 63. Shirley Sargent, Yosemite & Its Innkeepers (Yosemite, Calif.: Flying Spur Press, 1975), 162, 164. 64. Cited in Robert Turnage, “Ansel Adams: The Role of the Artist in the Environmental Movement,” in Celebrating the American Earth, ed. John Szarkowski (Washington, D.C.: The Wilderness Society). 65. Cited in Runte, Yosemite, 186, 199, 187. 66. Jonathan Spaulding, Ansel Adams and the American Landscape: A Biography (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1995), 96. 67. Ansel Adams, An Autobiography, ed. Mary Street Alinder (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1985), 184–85. 68. See http//www.thebracebridgedinneratyosemite.com/history.html. 69. Archives, Yosemite National Park, Box H3. 70. Frank Bonaventura, “Slowly Die the Embers,” Yosemite Association (1988): 4, 5. 71. Sferra and Loomis, “Parks and People,” 66. 72. Kenneth Brower, Yosemite: An American Treasure (Washington, D.C.: National Geographic Society, 1990, 1997), 183. 73. Sargent, Yosemite & Its Innkeepers, 166.

NOTES TO CHAPTER 6 1. Fox, John Muir and His Legacy, 277. 2. Muir’s articles on “The Forests of the Yosemite National Park” and “The Yellowstone National Park,” for example, fi rst appeared in The Atlantic Monthly and were published as Our National Parks in 1901, and were clearly tourist guides that encouraged visitors to experience the national parks. 3. Hal K. Rothman, “’A Regular Ding-Dong Fight’: Agency Culture and Evolution in the NPS-USFS Dispute, 1916–1937,” The Western Historical Quarterly XX, no. 2 (1989): 141, 151. 4. Aldo Leopold, “The Wilderness and Its Place in Forest Recreational Policy,” Journal of Forestry 19, no. 7 (1921): 720, 718, 719. 5. Ibid.: 721. 6. Douglas W. Scott, A Wilderness Forever Future: A Short History of the National Wilderness Preservation System, (Washington, D.C.: Pew Wilderness Center, 2001), 3. 7. Robert Sterling Yard, “The Wilderness Society Platform,” The Living Wilderness 1, no. 1 (1935): 2, 6. 8. Fox, John Muir and His Legacy, 214. 9. “National Parks for a New Generation: Visions, Realities, Prospects,” (Washington, D.C.: Conservation Foundation, 1985), 7–8. 10. Michael Frome, Battle for the Wilderness (New York: Praeger, 1974), 130. 11. David Brower, “’Mission 65’ Is Proposed by Reviewer of Park Service’s New Brochure on Wilderness,” National Parks Magazine 32 (January 1958): 3. 12. David Brower, ed., Wildlands in Our Civilization: Proceedings of the First Five Biennial Wilderness Conferences, 1949–1957 (San Francisco: Sierra Club, 1964), 173. 13. Stagner, “Preservation of Natural and Wilderness Values”: 138.

Notes

271

14. Sellars, Preserving Nature in the National Parks, 188. 15. Stagner, “Preservation of Natural and Wilderness Values”: 105. 16. Cited in Mark Harvey, Wilderness Forever: Howard Zahniser and the Path to the Wilderness Act (Seattle: Univ. of Washington Press, 2005), 189. 17. Brower, “‘Mission 65’”: 6, 45. Brower was not alone in questioning the Service’s traditional approach. As a sign that alternatives to Wirth’s Mather-tradition view of preservation were being considered, when a commission was called in 1957 (National Outdoor Recreation Resources Review Commission—ORRRC) to study the nation’s recreation resources (which the 1957 Wilderness Conference had called for), the National Park Service was not represented. Wirth complained about being left out, particularly when the commission was considering moving recreation resources from the NPS to a new Outdoor Recreation Bureau. “We felt that a new bureau was not necessary; it was our responsibility.” Wirth, Parks, Politics, and the People, 282. 18. Dilsaver, America’s National Park System, 277–78. 19. Ibid., 282. 20. Michael P. Cohen, The History of the Sierra Club 1892–1970 (San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1988), 328. 21. National Parks for the 21st Century: The Vail Agenda, (Montpelier, Vt.: Capital City Press, 1991), 96, 95. 22. Max Oelschlaeger’s work is obviously of importance in the development of the Wilderness Idea. However, because he places his philosophical history of the idea within a context that goes from Paleolithic humans to postmoderns, using a universal and archetypal model, his approach to wilderness does not include the American dimension discussed here. Max Oelschlaeger, The Idea of Wilderness: From Prehistory to the Age of Ecology (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1991). 23. David Brower, ed., Wilderness: America’s Living Heritage (San Francisco: Sierra Club, 1961), 32. 24. Turner, History, Frontier, and Section. This is very similar to what Richard Slotkin describes in Regeneration through Violence: one demonstrates that one has learned the lessons of the Indian and the wilderness by conquering them. Richard Slotkin, Regeneration through Violence (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan Press, 1973). The power of these mythic images, particularly the frontier as process, was significantly revisioned in Patricia Limerick’s 1987 Legacy of Conquest. See Patricia Nelson Limerick, The Legacy of Conquest: The Unbroken Past of the American West (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1987). 25. Cited in Harvey, Wilderness Forever, 45. 26. In the Epilogue to the 4th Edition he introduces what some would see as a misanthropic future of “island civilization,” in which humans are contained in self-sufficient living spaces that leave nature free to thrive without human impact. Roderick Frazier Nash, Wilderness and the American Mind, 4th ed. (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 2001), 381–82. 27. Scott, A Wilderness Forever Future, 2. 28. Ferguson, The Great Divide, 186–87. 29. Udall was great friends with Brower and supportive of the Sierra Club and its wilderness goals—and was walking a narrow line between these associations and his NPS Director Conrad Wirth. Cohen notes, in relation to Udall quoting Stegner, “Never had a Secretary of the Interior taken his text from the Sierra Club’s own canon.” Stegner wrote this piece when asked by David Pesonen, a research associate with a recreation survey committee (ORRRC) to write a nontraditional view of “recreation” related to wilderness. See Cohen, The History of the Sierra Club, 268–69, 261.

272

Notes

30. Stewart Udall, “Conservation in the 1960s: Action or stalemate?” Quoting from Wallace Stegner’s letter, “The Wilderness Idea,” in Brower, Wilderness: America’s Living Heritage, 97, 98. 31. Elvind T. Scoyen, “National Park Wilderness,” Appendix in Brower, Wilderness: America’s Living Heritage, 186. 32. David Brower, “Forward” in Brower, Wilderness: America’s Living Heritage, iii. 33. Sigrid Olsen, “The Spiritual Aspects of Wilderness“ in Brower, Wilderness: America’s Living Heritage, 17–18, 25. 34. Udall, “Conservation in the 1960s”in Brower, Wilderness: America’s Living Heritage, 98. 35. Sellars, Preserving Nature in the National Parks, 214. 36. Robbins, “A Report by the Advisory Committee”, 20, 21. 37. Freeman Tilden and Paul Schullery, The National Parks: The Classic Book on the National Parks, National Monuments, and Historic Sites, Revised and Expanded by Paul Schullery ed. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1986), 582, 585. 38. Simon, To Preserve Unimpaired,34. 39. Stephen H. Spurr, “The Value of Wilderness to Science“ in Francois Leydet, ed., Tomorrow’s Wilderness, Biennial Wilderness Conferences (San Francisco: Sierra Club, 1963), 73. 40. Cohen, The History of the Sierra Club, 257. 41. Ansel Adams and Nancy Newhall, This is the American Earth (San Francisco: Sierra Club, 1960, 1992), 11, 12, 14. 42. Ibid., 22, 48. 43. His point is that land use decisions grow out of conceptions of sacred lands, even though they claim to be secular decisions. Kenneth A. Erickson, “Ceremonial Landscapes of the American West,” Landscape 22 (1977): 39, 47. 44. Ansel Adams, “The Artist and the Ideals of Wilderness“ in Brower, Wilderness: America’s Living Heritage, 52–53. See also Ian McTaggert Cowan, “Science and the Wilderness” and Stanley A. Cain, “Ecological Islands as Natural Laboratories” in David Brower, ed., The Meaning of Wilderness to Science (San Francisco: Sierra Club, 1960), 65, 20. 45. Robert Marshall, “The Problem of the Wilderness,” Scientific Monthly 30, no. 2 (1930): 148. 46. Howard Zahniser, “Wilderness Forever“ in Brower, Wilderness: America’s Living Heritage, 155. 47. Adams, These We Inherit, 14. 48. “An Act to Establish a National Wilderness Preservation System for the Permanent Good of the Whole People, and for other Purposes” in Dilsaver, America’s National Park System, 278. Emphasis added. 49. Zahniser, “Wilderness Forever” in Brower, Wilderness: America’s Living Heritage, 155. 50. Cited in Scott, A Wilderness Forever Future, 12. 51. Brower, Wilderness: America’s Living Heritage, 192. 52. “Secretary Udall’s Letter on National Park Management,” 1964 in Dilsaver, America’s National Park System, 274. 53. Michael McCloskey, “Wilderness Movement at the Crossroads, 1945–1970,” Pacific Historical Review 41 (1972): 352. 54. Spaulding, Ansel Adams and the American Landscape, 290–91. 55. Ibid., 291. 56. Anne Hammond, Ansel Adams: Divine Performance (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 2002), 125–26. 57. Adams and Newhall, This Is the American Earth, 15, ii–iii.

Notes

273

58. Spaulding, Ansel Adams and the American Landscape, 314. 59. Ibid., 133. 60. Comparison made in Hammond, Ansel Adams: Divine Performance, 70. From William Carlos Williams, Patterson, “The Delineaments of the Giants.” 61. Spaulding, Ansel Adams and the American Landscape, 90. 62. Hammond, Ansel Adams: Divine Performance, 133. 63. Cited in Ibid., 102 64 Adams, “The Artist and the Ideals of Wilderness,“ 59. 65. Hammond, Ansel Adams: Divine Performance, 103. 66. Adams, These We Inherit, 14. 67. Hammond, Ansel Adams: Divine Performance, 128, 132. 68. Adams and Newhall, This Is the American Earth, 76, 80, 88. 69. Fox, John Muir and His Legacy, 358. 70. Cohen, The History of the Sierra Club, 454. 71. Fox, John Muir and His Legacy, 373. 72. Hammond, Ansel Adams: Divine Performance, 138. 73. Alfred North Whitehead, Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology (New York: The Humanities Press, 1929), 33. 74. Interestingly, in Turner’s frontier hypothesis Indians play a crucial role— both in providing the model for the “savage” life that must be lived through and in presenting the opportunity for heroic conquest. In the national park model wilderness seems to take on the role of teacher and the heroic adventure must somehow be accomplished without physical conquest. 75. Cited in Cohen, The History of the Sierra Club, 254. 76. Cited in James Gorman, “Yosemite and the Invention of Wilderness,” New York Times, Tuesday, September 2, 2003. 77. Cohen, The History of the Sierra Club, 285, 290–91. 78. McCloskey, “Wilderness Movement at the Crossroads,” 352. 79. Darling and Eichorn, Man and Nature in the National Parks, 28. 80. Sellars, Preserving Nature in the National Parks, 273. 81. Darling and Eichorn, Man and Nature in the National Parks, 74, 76. 82. Ibid.,75, 76.

NOTES TO CHAPTER 7 1. In 2011 there are nearly 400 units in the Park System and less than sixty of them are “nature” parks (with only about half of these containing lodging), and the differences between them in terms of resource management are diminishing: nearly all have to deal with issues of natural and cultural preservation. 2. More recently “interagency” positions have developed. Martha Williamson has served in a fi re planner position jointly funded by the Forest Service and Park Service since 2008. (Interview March 1, 2011.) 3. Barbara J. Morehouse, A Place Called Grand Canyon: Contested Geographies (Tucson: Univ. of Arizona Press, 1996), 7. 4. Shields, Places on the Margin, see, e.g., 6–7, 64–66. 5. Morehouse, A Place Called Grand Canyon, 100. 6. Ibid., 117. 7. Patrick C. West and Steven R. Brechin, eds., Resident Peoples and National Parks: Social Dilemmas and Strategies in International Conservation (Tucson: Univ. of Arizona Press, 1991), 224–25. 8. Morehouse, A Place Called Grand Canyon, 107.

274 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14.

15.

16. 17. 18.

19.

20. 21. 22.

23. 24.

Notes Ibid., 6. Muir, Nature Writings, 245. Dilsaver, America’s National Park System, 239. Darling and Eichorn, Man and Nature in the National Parks, 80. Dilsaver, America’s National Park System, 253–54. As Richard Sellars points out in “Scenery and Science in U.S. National Parks,” what the Leopold Report does contribute to an increased emphasis on ecology is the recognition of the vast changes that had occurred in park ecosystems because of Euro-American development. National Parks, National Legacy 13, no. 7. Accessed March 22, 2011, http://www.america. gov/publications/ejournalusa/0708.html. One could look further back to the National Parks Conservation Association’s 1979 “Adjacent Lands Survey” and the Park Service State of the Parks, 1980, both of which called attention to the threats to park lands from outside the parks, thus calling for ecosystem considerations. The reports also noted the inadequacy of scientific research within the parks for dealing with these issues. National Park Service, “National Parks for the 21st Century: The Vail Agenda,” 28. “Science and the National Parks,” in Dilsaver, America’s National Park System, 446. National Park Service, “The Natural Resource Challenge: The Park Service’s Action Plan for Preserving Natural Resources,” accessed March 20, 2011, http://www.nature.nps.gov/challenge/. See also Sellars, Preserving Nature in the National Parks. In the revised 1997 edition, the “Epilogue” includes a description of these events. U.S. Congress, “National Parks Omnibus Management Act,” 1998. Title II. Section 202, accessed March 22, 2011, http://www.nps.gov/gis/data_standards/omnibus_management_act.html. For a detailed description of the Act see David Harmon, “The New Research Mandate for America’s National Park System: Where It Came from and What It Could Mean,” The George Wright Forum 16, no. 1 (1999): 8–23. National Parks Advisory Commission, “Rethinking National Parks for the 21st Century,” accessed March 22, 2011, http://www.nps.gov/policy/report. htm. Sellars, Preserving Nature in the National Parks, 297. The relationship between science and the national parks is a troubled one. Almost everyone I talked with in the Park Service seemed genuinely baffled by my questions about neglect of science in the history of the parks. They could point to Muir’s interest in geology and Hayden’s survey in pre-Park Service days to show science had been crucial from the very beginning. Or, under the Park Service, they could point to George Wright’s significant attempt to apply scientific survey methods to the parks’ flora and fauna and to the naturalist programs which had always been a hallmark of Interpretation. Nonetheless, I am convinced by Sellars’ reading of the history; and the sincere bafflement by those who live the Park Service narrative helps to understand how threatening science at one time seemed and why the adaptation of the narrative now to make the scientific approach seem congruent with the history is a slow process. Robert B. Keiter and Mark S. Boyce, eds., The Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem: Redefi ning America’s Wilderness Heritage (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1991), 3. Robert B. Keiter, “Taking Account of the Ecosystem on the Public Domain: Law and Ecology in the Greater Yellowstone Region,” University of Colorado

Notes

25.

26. 27.

28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33.

34. 35. 36. 37. 38.

39. 40.

41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48.

275

Law Review 60 (1989): 943, 933. The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and for the Forest Service the National Forest Management Act also encouraged coordinated efforts between agencies. For a discussion of the project and the controversies between John and Frank Craighead and the NPS see, for example, James A. Pritchard, Preserving Yellowstone’s Natural Conditions (Lincoln: Univ. of Nebraska Press, 1999), 237–48. See also Chase, “Rendezvous at Death Gulch” in Playing God in Yellowstone. Pritchard, Preserving Yellowstone’s Natural Conditions, 252. Another transboundary example is the Crown of the Continent Ecosystem, which runs from Idaho and Montana to Alberta and British Columbia and includes Glacier and Waterton National Parks. Of related interest are the Grand Canyon Trust on the Colorado Plateau and the Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative. National Parks Conservation Association, “Adjacent Lands Survey: No Park Is an Island.” “State of the Parks, May 1980” in Dilsaver, America’s National Park System, 405–8. Keiter, “Taking Account of the Ecosystem on the Public Domain,” 485–86. The term “ecosystem” may have been too new at the time or may have been avoided because of the negative connotations the term had for those who saw federal land managers uniting against development. Pritchard, Preserving Yellowstone’s Natural Conditions, 293. Bruce Goldstein, “The Struggle over Ecosystem Management at Yellowstone,” BioScience 42, no. 3 (1992): 185–86. See also Louisa Wilcox, “Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem Case Study,” Natural Resources and Environmental Issues 5, no. 1/10 (1995): 67. Greater Yellowstone Coalition. accessed February 9, 2011, www.greateryellowstone.org/about/who-we-are.php. Keiter, “Taking Account of the Ecosystem on the Public Domain,” 1001. Goldstein, “The Struggle over Ecosystem Management at Yellowstone.” Susan G. Clark, Ensuring Greater Yellowstone’s Future: Choices for Leaders and Citizens (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 2008), 8, 13, 21. Dennis Glick, “Greater Yellowstone Tomorrow: Charting a Course for a Greater Yellowstone,” in Conservation of Biodiversity and the New Regional Planning, ed. Richard E. Saunier and Richard Meganck (Organization of American States & IUCN—World Conservation Union, 1995). Clark, Ensuring Greater Yellowstone’s Future, 43. David J. Mattson et al., “Designing and Managing Protected Areas for Grizzly Bears: How Much Is Enough?” in National Parks and Protected Areas: Their Role in Environmental Protection, ed. R. Gerald Wright (Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell, 1996), 153. Wilcox, “Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem Case Study,” 5. Ibid., 69, 70. Glick, “Greater Yellowstone Tomorrow.” Clark, Ensuring Greater Yellowstone’s Future, 25. Keiter, “Taking Account of the Ecosystem on the Public Domain,” 922. Clark, Ensuring Greater Yellowstone’s Future, 32. William R. Lowry, Repairing Paradise: The Restoration of Nature in America’s National Parks (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2009), 27, 33. Unlike Montana and Idaho, Wyoming lists wolves as trophy animals—and thus restricts killing—only in the northwestern part of the state; elsewhere, they are listed as predatory animals with unrestricted killing. Wyoming

276

49. 50. 51. 52.

53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66.

67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72.

Notes points out that it requires the same number of mating pairs in the trophy area as Montana and Idaho do for their whole states. As of September 2011 a Wyoming Grey Wolf Management Plan which extends the trophy (limited kill) area seasonally to “facilitate natural dispersal of wolves between Wyoming and Idaho” seems headed for federal approval. Accessed December 3, 2011, http://gf.state.wy.us/downloads/pdf/wolfplan2011/2011–09–14_ FinalApprovedWolfMgmtPlan.pdf. Interviews with Mike Clark, current Executive Director of GYC, June 24, 2011 and Ed Lewis, former Executive Director of GYC, 1986–94. Keiter, “Taking Account of the Ecosystem on the Public Domain,” 1007. Goldstein, “The Struggle over Ecosystem Management at Yellowstone,” 183. Thomas F. Thornton, “Alaska Native Corporations and Subsistence: Paradoxical Forces in the Making of Sustainable Communities,” in Sustainability and Communities of Place, ed. Carl A. Maida (New York: Berghahn Books, 2007), 41. Theodore Catton, Inhabited Wilderness: Indians, Eskimos, and National Parks in Alaska, (Albuquerque: Univ. of New Mexico Press, 1997), 105. Katmai National Monument (1918) and Glacier Bay National Monument (1925), established by Presidential decree and not requiring Congressional approval, allowed neither hunting nor mining. Catton, Inhabited Wilderness, 121. Ibid., 26–27. J.E. Gardner and J.G. Nelson, “Comparing National Park and Related Reserve Policy in Hinterland Areas: Alaska, Northern Canada, and Northern Australia,” Environmental Conservation 7, no. 1 (1980): 43. Frank Norris, Alaska Subsistence: A National Park Service Management History (Anchorage: U.S. Dept. of Interior, 2002), 271. Catton, Inhabited Wilderness, 81. U.S. Congress, “Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act,” accessed May 30, 2011, www.http://alaska.fws.gov/asm/anilca/title08.html. However, the State of Alaska claimed this discrimination against urbanites was illegal, forcing the federal government to manage hunting, and later fishing, on public lands. Catton, Inhabited Wilderness, 85. Ibid., xviii, 4. Ibid., 168. See Ch. 7, “The Lost Tribe,” for Catton’s recounting of this story. Norris, Alaska Subsistence, 27. Theodore Catton, “To Make a Better Nation: An Administrative History of the Timbisha Shoshone Homeland Act,” October, 2009 (Rocky Mountain Cooperative Ecosystem Studies Unit for Death Valley National Park), accessed November 1, 2011, http://www.nps.gov/history/history/online_ books/deva/better_nation.pdf,1–2. Burnham, Indian Country, God’s Country, 301. Emphasis in original. Ibid., 184, 189. National Park Service, “Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve: An Anaktuvuk Pass History,” accessed May 19, 2011, http://www.nps.gov/gaar/ historyculture/anaktuvuk-pass.htm. Thornton, “Alaska Native Corporations and Subsistence,” 57, 51. Arctic Slope Regional Corporation, accessed June 6, 2011, http://www.asrc. com/About/Pages/Corporate.aspx. Yupktak Bista, “A Report on Subsistence and the Conservation of the Yupik Lifestyle,” accessed June 5, 2011, http://ankn.uaf.edu/Curriculum/Books/ DoesOneWay/INTRODUCTION.html.

Notes

277

73. David Harmon, “A Bridge over the Chasm: Finding Ways to Achieve Integrated Natural and Cultural Heritage Conservation,” in National Heritage: At the Interface of Nature and Culture, ed. Peter Howard and Thymio Papayannis (London: Routledge, 2007), 77. 74. Eric Higgs, Nature by Design: People, Natural Process, and Ecological Restoration (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2003). 4–5, 242, 279. 75. National Park Service, “Big Bend National Park—Chihuahuan Desert Biosphere Reserve,” accessed July 7, 2011, http://www.nps.gov/bibe/naturescience/mab.htm. An earlier use of a related term by Deep Ecology philosophy shows the changes in conceptualizations in the twenty-fi rst century. Deep Ecology stressed the separation of human culture and nature by contrasting biocentric approaches with anthropocentric approaches. As with “wilderness” language the focus was on nature without humans rather than seeing humans as part of nature or the biosphere. 76. “U.S. MAB: Strategic Plan for the U.S. Biosphere Reserve Program,” accessed June 21, 2011, http://www.sovereignty.net/p/land/usmab-sp.htm. 77. Quotations are from “Big Bend National Park.” Also incorporated into this description are ideas from “U.S. MAB” and Thomas Schaaf, “Biosphere Reserves: Tangible and Intangible Values,” in The Full Value of Parks: From Economics to the Intangible, ed. David Harmon and Allen D. Putney (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2003), 185. 78. Gary E. Davis, David M. Graber, and Steven A. Acker, “National Parks as Scientific Benchmark Standards for the Biosphere; or, How Are You Going to Tell How It Used to Be, When There’s Nothing Left to See?” in Harmon and Putney, The Full Value of Parks, 130; Allen D. Putney, “Introduction: Perspectives on the Values of Protected Areas,” in Harmon ad Putney, The Full Value of Parks. 79. “Big Bend National Park.” 80. Jane Robertson Vernhes, “Biosphere Reserves: The Beginnings, the Present, and the Future Challenges,” in Worldwide Conservation: Proceedings of the Symposium on Biosphere Reserves, (Rocky Mountain National Park, 1987), 15–16. 81. J. Ronald Engel, “The Symbolic and Ethical Dimensions of the Biosphere Reserve Concept,” in Ibid., 21. 82. David Harmon, “Cultural Diversity, Human Subsistence, and the National Park Ideal,” Environmental Ethics 9, no. 2 (1987). 83. Raymond Dasmann, “National Parks, Nature Conservation, and Future Primitive,” The Ecologist 6, no. 5 (1976). 84. Engel, “The Symbolic and Ethical Dimensions of the Biosphere Reserve Concept,” 23. 85. National Park Service, “National Heritage Areas,” accessed July 16, 2011, http://www.nps.gov/history/heritageareas/FA/. 86. Joseph W. Meeker, “Red, White, and Black in National Parks,” in On Interpretation: Sociology for Interpreters of Natural and Cultural History, ed. Gary E. Machlis and Donald R. Field (Corvallis: Oregon State Univ. Press, 1984), 127–28, 131. 87. Meeker, “Red, White, and Black in National Parks,” 132–34 . 88. Dudley Edmondson, Black and Brown Faces in America’s Wild Places (Cambridge, Minn.: Adventure Publications, 2006), 17–18, 27, 35–39, 40. 89. Quite contrary to the image of a pristine land that greeted the fi rst Europeans, “A good argument can be made that the human presence was less visible in 1750 than it was in 1492” because of Indian use of the land. William M. Denevan, “The Pristine Myth: The Landscape of the Americas in 1492,”

278 Notes Annals of the Association of American Geographers Social Issues Resources Series (1992). 90. Duncan and Burns, The National Parks, 56. 91. Harmon, “A Bridge over the Chasm,” 77, 79.

NOTES TO THE EPILOGUE 1. As mentioned earlier, although this book uses the term “American” to mean The United States, “U.S. American” is sometimes used to note that “America” is more than The United States. 2. Stewart, A Space on the Side of the Road, 3. 3. William C. Tweed, Uncertain Path: A Search for the Future of National Parks (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 2010), 10, 172. 4. William C. Tweed, “An Idea in Trouble: Thoughts about the Future of Traditional National Parks in the United States,” George Wright Forum 27, no. 1 (2010): 6. 5. Davis, Graber, and Acker, “National Parks as Scientific Benchmark Standards for the Biosphere, 132. 6. Tweed, “An Idea in Trouble”: 7. 7. Tweed, Uncertain Path, 67–68, 185. 8. See, for example, the opening of episode five, “Great Nature,” where Nevada Barr makes this statement. 9. Tweed, Uncertain Path, 202. 10. Daniel B. Botkin, Discordant Harmonies: A New Ecology for the TwentyFirst Century (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1990), 124. 11. Ibid., vii, 25, 102, 48. 12. Ibid., 71. 13. Laurie Yung, David N. Cole, and Richard J. Hobbs, “A Path Forward: Conserving Protected Areas in the Context of Global Environmental Change,” in Beyond Naturalness, ed. David N. Cole and Laurie Yung), 35, 38. 14. David M. Lodge and Christopher Hamlin, eds., Religion and the New Ecology: Environmental Responsibility in a World in Flux (Notre Dame: Univ. of Notre Dame Press, 2006), 7. 15. Gregory H. Aplet and David N. Cole, “The Trouble with Naturalness: Rethinking Park and Wilderness Goals,” in Cole and Yung, Beyond Naturalness, 19, 21. 16. Patricia Ann Fleming, “Can Nature (Legitimately) Be Our Guide?” in Lodge and Hamlin, Religion and the New Ecology, 222, 209. 17. Ibid., 216, 222. 18. Botkin, Discordant Harmonies, 129, 189. 19. Aplet and Cole, “The Trouble with Naturalness,” 26. 20. Intervention is the preferred term by Cole and Yung over preservation, conservation, or restoration because it acknowledges human intentionality, includes more options, “and avoids the connotation of a return to past conditions.” David N. Cole and Laurie Yung, “Park and Wilderness Stewardship: The Dilemma of Management Intervention,” in Cole and Yung, Beyond Naturalness, 7. 21. Yung, Cole, and Hobbs, “A Path Forward,” 265. 22. Richard J. Hobbs et al., “Evolving Ecological Understandings: The Implications of Ecosystem Dynamics,” in Cole and Yung, Beyond Naturalness, 43. 23. David N. Cole, Constance Millar, and Nathan L. Stephenson, “Responding to Climate Change: A Toolbox of Management Strategies,” in Cole and Yung, Beyond Naturalness, 180.

Notes

279

24. Tweed, Uncertain Path, 180–81. 25. David N. Cole, Eric Higgs, and Peter S. White, “Historical Fidelity: Maintaining Legacy and Connection to Heritage,” in Cole and Yung, Beyond Naturalness, 180. 26. Tweed, Uncertain Path, 197–99. 27. Ibid., x, xi. 28. William R. Lowry, The Capacity for Wonder: Preserving National Parks (Washington, D.C.: The Brookings Institution, 1994), 3, 1. 29. Sellars, Preserving Nature in the National Parks, 302–3. 30. David H. Becker, “Changing Direction in Administrative Agency Rulemaking: ‘Reasoned Analysis,’ the Roadless Rule Repeal, and the 2006 Park Service Management Policies,” Environs: Environmental Law & Policy Journal 30 (2006): 11. 31. Ibid.: 12. 32. The remaining committees were Funding and Budget, Governance, and Capacity. The areas of focus in this report present significant changes from those of the Vail Agenda which, in 1991, was considered groundbreaking. 33. National Parks Second Century Commission, “Advancing the National Park Idea,” (Washington, D.C.: National Parks Conservation Association), 14, 17. The Committee Reports are not paginated. The Commission’s and the Committees’ Final Reports are also available at http://www.npca.org/ commission/. 34. Howard H. Baker, Bennett J. Johnston, and Dennis Galvin, “The Next Century,” National Parks (Fall 2009). 35. Mark Klett, Rebecca Solnit, and Byron Wolfe, Yosemite in Time: Ice Ages, Tree Clocks, Ghost Rivers (San Antonio: Trinity Univ. Press, 2005), 221, 106. 36. James Gorman, “Yosemite and the Invention of Wilderness,” New York Times, Tuesday, September 2, 2003. Solnit’s emphasis. 37. John Else, “Yosemite: The Fate of Heaven,” (Lion’s Gate, 1989). 38. Rebecca Solnit, Savage Dreams: A Journey into the Landscape Wars of the American West (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1994), 222. 39. Klett, Solnit, and Wolfe, Yosemite in Time, 104. 40. Ken Burns, The National Parks: America’s Best Idea (Florentine Films and WETA Television, 2009), Special Features, “The Shrine of Democracy.” 41. “Everyone’s Yosemite: Connecting Urban Kids to National Parks,” Sierra Club Magazine (July-August 2009): 36. 42. Katharine L. White, “American Indians’ Association with Yellowstone National Park (1870–2004),” Yellowstone National Park Research Library, 2005, 37. 43. Inter Tribal Bison Cooperative, Who We Are. Accessed September 14, 2011, http://www.itbcbison.com/about.php. 44. White, “American Indians’ Association with Yellowstone,” 39. 45. Judith Lewis, “Team of Rivals,” Sierra Magazine (2009). 46. Klett, Solnit, and Wolfe, Yosemite in Time, 103–4. 47. Ibid. 48. In an earlier essay he focuses on how commercial tourism and the Park Service control the experience of the Park and “seek to keep this place at a distance from the passage of time,” leaving little room for the individual agency of tourists. Mark Neumann, “The Commercial Canyon: Culturally Constructing the ‘Other’ in the Theater of the West,” in Discovered Country: Tourism and Survival in the American West, ed. Scott Norris (Albuquerque: Stone Ladder Press, 1994), 205. 49. Neumann, On the Rim, 215–16. Neumann’s emphasis.

280 Notes 50. Orland’s comments on the photograph add the rich setting: “Technically speaking, the actual artwork is a split-toned, hand-colored black-and-white silver gelatin print. Conceptually speaking, this picture is (at least in part) about capturing the whole history of photography in Yosemite in a single image. The natural landscape in the distance is rendered in sepia tones reminiscent of the nineteenth century photographs of Watkins & Muybridge, while the foreground gives way to the cold selenium tones favored by Ansel Adams. And lastly, man-made artifacts appear (e.g., Half Dome reincarnated as a trash container) and the sign breaks out into lurid color, creating a Yosemite more vivid than reality” (email correspondence, November 7, 2011). 51. Grand Canyon National Park—Selected Artists—South Rim—2010–2011, accessed September 7, 2011, http://www.nps.gov/grca/supportyourpark/ selected-artists-south-rim-2010–2011. 52. Neumann, On the Rim, 121. 53. Ibid., 264. 54. Paul Ricoeur, Lectures on Ideology and Utopia, ed. George H. Taylor (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1986), 258, 16–17. 55. Neumann, On the Rim, 270 , 293. 56. Ibid., 294. 57. Bodnar, Remaking America, 256 n. 11, 16. 58. David Jacobson, Place and Belonging in America (Baltimore, The Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 2002), 24. 59. Edward T. Linenthal, “The National Park Service and Civic Engagement,” George Wright Forum 25, no. 1 (2008): 5, 6. 60. George Wright Society Conference on Parks, Protected Areas & Cultural Sites, New Orleans, La., March 14–18, 2011. 61. National Park Service, Wild and Scenic Rivers: Charting the Course: Navigating the Next 40 Years of the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act, accessed September 15, 2011, http:/www.nature.nps.gov/water/wild_scenic_rivers/WSR_FinalReport_April_13_2007_BH.pdf, 2007. 62. Klett, Solnit, and Wolfe, Yosemite in Time, 107. 63. Ricoeur, Lectures on Ideology and Utopia, 310.

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Index

A Adams, Ansel, 172–73, 177, 185, 187–93, 245; Child in Mountain Meadow, 189–91; Clearing Winter Storm, 235–37; Stehekin River Forest, 189–90; This is the American Earth, 185, 187, 190 African Americans, 74, 220, 221, 239 Ahwahneechee. See Miwok Ahwahnee Hotel, 144, 173 Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (ANILCA), 211–12, 214, 216 Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA), 211, 214, 216 Albanese, Catherine, 3, 4, 75, 77 Albright, Horace: and beginnings of NPS, 123; and Hetch Hetchy, 125; and National Park tradition, 149–50, 153, 160–62; and science, 153–56, 158–60, 162, 174. See also “Oh, Ranger!” American aesthetic, 64, 85, 97 American West, mythology of, 14, 99, 102, 234; and Alaska as last frontier, 209; as New World, 22–25, 28, 33, 74, 116; and photography, 41; and science, 156; and See America First, 74. See also Eden, myth, myths of nature and America, Virgin Land “American Scholar, The” (Emerson), 21, 76 Anaktuvuk Village. See Nunamuit Anderson, Nancy, 38, 40–41 anthropology: of experience, 6, 14; and orientalism, 84, 212–13; salvage, 82

Antimodernism, 75,78; and exotic cultures, 82, 91, 98; and industrialization, 97, 109, 115, 120, 176; and nature, 151, 186 Antiquities Act, 119, 120 Aplet, Gregory H., 228, 229 architecture and National Parks, 76, 78; at Glacier, 107, 109; at Grand Canyon, 90–92, 94–96; landscape, 28, 47, 123, 142; and Mission 66, 161; at Yellowstone, 63–64 Arctic Slope Regional Corporations (ASRC), 216–17. See also Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act Arts and Crafts Movement, 64 Atchison, Topeka, Santa Fe Railway (ATSF): and construction of Grand Canyon mythology, 79, 81; and construction of Native Americans as living ruins, 82; and development, 96; and gender, 98–99; and Grand Canyon pilgrimage, 15, 97–99; and orientalism, 84–86; and the Southwest, 5, 80, 82–83 Ayres, Thomas, 6, 30–32; Yo-Semite Falls, 30, 32

B Babcock, Barbara, 81, 84, 97 Badlands National Park, 213 Bahktin, Mikhail, 11 Baigell, Matthew, 24 Baker, Gerard, 222, 238 Barbee, Robert, 56 bears: and ecosystem management, 160, 202–3, 245; feeding,

298

Index

139–41, 160, 170, 203; and tourists, 9, 136, 143, 164–65 Becker, David, 231 Bierstadt, Albert, 27, 30; and Indians, 39, 113; and contemporary park art, 245; and Manifest Destiny, 38–39; and Moran, 59; and Yosemite, 40–41, 45 biocentrism, 187, 192 biosphere reserves, 197, 217–19, 249. See also Man and the Biosphere biotic community, 193 Blackfeet (Piegan): and George Grinnell, 101, 104–5, 112, 141, 222; as negotiators with GNP, 104, 112; as promoters of Glacier, 106–7, 110; as symbols of primitive wilderness, 109. See also Blackfoot Blackfoot, 262n89. See also Blackfeet Blackfoot Lodge Tales, 104–5 Bodnar, John: and official and vernacular discourse, 11, 135, 153, 174, 248; and public memory, 11, 150, 193 Book of the National Parks (Yard), 127 Boone and Crockett Club, 103–4, 209 Botkin, Daniel, 227–29 Bracebridge Dinner, 173 Brimmer, Frank, 131–32 Brower, David: and Adams, 172; and development in Yosemite, 174; and Sierra Club, 177; and wilderness, 178, 183, 187 Brower, Kenneth, 174 Brunner, Edward M., 14 Bryant, Harold C., 154 Bryce, Lord James, 131 Bunnell, Lafayette, 26, 30 Burke, Edward, 28 Buffalo Soldiers (African American soldiers), 222, 239 Burns, Ken, 3, 16–18, 196, 221, 227, 238–39 Burton, Richard, 5, 80 Bush, George W., 201

C Caitlin, George, 209 Cammerer, Arno, 159 Camp Curry, 137–39, 170, 172 Carson, Rachel, 180; Silent Spring, 151, 193

Castle Geyser, Upper Geyser Basin (Moran), 57 Catton, Theodore, 212–13 Central Pacific Railroad, 42 ceremonial landscapes, 124, 127, 128, 185 Chase, Alston, 169, 170 Chasm of the Colorado (Moran), 80, 91 Chautauqua Movement, 76–77 Chidester, David, 10–11 Child in Mountain Meadow (Adams) 189–91 Church Universal and Triumphant, 207 civil religion, 251n1 civil war, 21, 26–27, 29, 47, 130; and Bierstadt, 40 Clark, Mike, 208 Clark, Susan, 205–8, 214 Clearing Autumn Smoke (Klett and Wolfe), 235–38 Clearing Winter Storm (Adams) 235–38 climate change, 16, 226–32 climax communities, 166, 226, 269n39 Cohen, Michael, 185 Cole, David N., 228–29 Colter, Mary Ellen, 85, 87 communitas, 8–10 conservation: and Adams, 188–90; in Alaska, 209–212; and ecology, 217–220; movement, 151, 165, 167, 175–88; and Muir, 69, 175; and national parks, 47, 61; and NPS, 128, 201, 231; of nature and culture, 222; versus preservation, 117, 121; and Roosevelt, 102, 115, 120; and USFS, 117–18. See also utilitarian conservation Cooke, Jay, 52–53, 60 Cooperative Ecosystem Studies Units (CESU), 200 coyote: as predator, 159 Craighead Bear Study. See bears: ecosystem management Cronon, William, 4, 5, 228 Crown of the Continent Ecosystem, 275n27 Cruikshank, M.A., 67

D Dana, C.W., 22–23

Index Darling, F. Fraser, 171, 193–94 Darwin, Charles, 92 Dasmann, Raymond, 219 Deep Ecology, 151, 191, 277n75 Deloria, Phil, 78 Democratic Vistas (Whitman), 76 democracy: and Adams , 185; and automobiles, 131–33; and Burns, 16–18, 222; and Chautauqua, 76–77; and JapaneseAmerican internment camps, 239; and the National Park Idea, 116, 118, 122, 126–27; and national parks, 7–8, 17, 24, 36, 74, 238, 239, 249; and nature, 22; and NPS decisionmaking, 180; and Olmsted, 48, 79, 145; and park architecture, 64, 76–77; and pilgrimage rituals, 136; and Walt Whitman, 76; and the Yellowstone Campfi re Story, 128, 143, 251n3 Denali National Park, 196, 209. See also Mount McKinley National Park Devil’s Tower National Monument, 120 DeVoto, Bernard, 160, 187 Dilworth, Leah, 83, 97, 115 Dinosaur National Monument, 177 diversity: biocultural, 217, 222, 223; biodiversity, 12, 15, 201, 204, 218, 234; cultural, 10, 220, 234 Drury, Newton, 160 Duncan, David, 16 Dutton, Clarence, 5, 80, 91–95, 103; and geology, art, religion, 93–95; Tertiary History of the Grand Canyon District, 80, 91, 93–95

E Eade, John, 10, 14, 253n36 Early, Katherine, 54, 59 ecospirituality, 151, 192 ecosystem, 16, 184, 194, 198–208, 217–23, 226–32; and fi re, 169–70; Cooperative Ecosystem Studies Units (CESU), 200; as dynamic, 228–29, 232; and greater Yellowstone, 201–8; as homeostatic, 226, 269n39; humans and, 217–18, 229; model, 16, 152, 199, 214;

299

and NPS mission, 170, 194; and park management, 184, 198–201 Eden: as pristine, uncivilized America, 195, 220, 234, 248; as wilderness, 180–85, 237; Yosemite as, 37, 41 Edmondson, Dudley, 221 Eichorn, Noel, 171, 193–94 Eliade, Mircea, 10, 251n3 Else, John: Yosemite: The Fate of Heaven, 237 El Tovar Hotel, 85, 96–100, 107, 123 Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 43, 48, 84; “The American Scholar,” 21, 24; “The Progress of Culture,” 76 Endangered Species Act (ESA), 202, 208 Eskimo, 74, 212; Inupiaq, 216; Yupik, 217. See also Nunamiut ethnology, 82, 85, 105; Bureau of, 82 Evening Glow of Yosemite Waterfall (Obata), 240 Everglades National Park, 159 Everts, Truman, 62

F Fauna I (Wright), 155, 162, 165 Ferguson, Gary, 182 fi re: policy, 168–69, 204; in Yellowstone, 169 Franklin, John Hope, 201 Fred Harvey Company: and development of Grand Canyon, 81, 85, 96, 133; and Native Americans, 82–85, 87, 90, 97, 109, 115; and pilgrimage in Grand Canyon, 15, 96–99, 101 Fremont, Jessie Benton, 42, 46–47 frontier, 1, 8, 29, 99, 188; and Alaska, 209–10, 212, 216; and exploration, 59; and Frederick Jackson Turner, 102, 117; and Fred Harvey, 97–98; and Glacier National Park, 102, 105–9, 115; and National Park Idea, 117; as primeval America, 126; and Roosevelt, 102, 104; values, 99, 181, 207, 216; and Watkins, 41; as wilderness, 127, 180–85

G Gaia, 9

300

Index

Gallatin National Forest, 206 Gates of the Arctic National Park, 212, 214–16 Geertz, Clifford, 3 gender, 68; and automobile, 132–33; and Grand Canyon National Park, 97–100; and strenuous living, 111, 115, 261n71 George Wright Society, 249 Gila National Forest, 176 Gilded Age, 64, 74 Gill, Sam, 4 Gilpin, William, 22–23 Glacier Bay National Monument, 210 Glacier National Park, 119, 246; development by Grinnell and Hill 103–6, 123; and frontier, 102–3, 105–6, 115; and Glacier Park Hotel, 107–8, 110; and great outdoors, 101; and Native Americans, 104, 106–7, 109, 112–14; and orientalism, 78, 109; pilgrimage in, 109–112, 115; preservation and conquest, 101, 106–7; and See America First, 73 Glacier Park Lodge. See Glacier National Park: Glacier Park Hotel Goldstein, Bruce, 205, 208 Goethe, C.M., 153 Grand Canyon National Park: as American shrine, 73, 79, 91; and architectural language, 91–92, 95–96; and architecture 96–99; Easter sunrise service at, 100– 101; and geological sublime, 94; as National Monument, 81, 120; and Native Americans, 81–90; and negotiations with Havasupai, 97, 113, 198, 214, 222; as non-scenic, 5, 79–80; and orientalism, 78, 84–85, 91; and pilgrimage 97–99; and religion, 92–93; and representational space, 197–98; as ruins, 91–92; and sublime, 91–92 Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, 50, 52, 66 Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone (Moran), 56, 59, 61, 80 Grand Canyon Trust, 275n27 Greater Yellowstone Coalition (GYC), 204–208; and “Greater Yellowstone Tomorrow,” 205–6

Greater Yellowstone Coordinating Committee (GYCC), 203–4, 207, Vision for the Future, 204, 207 Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, 152, 196, 201–8, 218, 235 Great Northern Railroad (GNR): and development of Glacier, 15, 105; and Native Americans, 107; and “See America First,” 73; and tourism, 123 great outdoors: and automobiles, 132; and nature religion, 192; as pilgrimage, 97; and strenuous living 101, 111, 115; and wilderness movement, 151 Great Unknown: Grand Canyon as, 79, 90–91, 96; Southwest as, 80 Greeley, Horace, 33, 35, 45 Green Book, 168, 171 Grinnell, George B.: and Blackfeet, 104–5, 112; and Boone and Crocket Club, 103–4; and establishment of Glacier National Park, 103, 105–6 Grinnell, Joseph, 145, 153, 155 Grisley Giant, The (Watkins), 43–44 Grusin, Richard, 94, 96 Guadalupe Hidalgo, Treaty of, 80, 82 Gwaltney, Bill, 221

H Hahn, William: Yosemite Valley from Glacier Point, 34 Haines, Aubrey, 144, 173–74 Hambourg, Maria, 42, 46–47 Hamlin, Christopher, 228 Hammond, Anne, 188–89, 192 Hansen, Bert, 51, 143, 173–74 Harmon, David, 217, 219, 222 Hart, Albert Bushnell, 74, 90 Harte, Bret, 32 Hartzog, George, 167 Harvey Girls, 100 Harvey, Mark, 181 Havasupai: and negotiations with Grand Canyon National Park, 97, 113, 198, 214, 222; and tourism, 90 Hayden, Ferdinand, 53, 56, 59–61 Hayden Survey, 53–54, 56, 60 Hedges, Cornelius, 50, 52, 60 Hetch Hetchy, 18, 117, 120–22, 125, 129, 175 Higgs, Eric, 217

Index Hill, Louis, 103, 105–6, 109–10, 123 Holme, Garnet, 51, 143 Holmes, Oliver Wendell, 44–45 Holmes, William Henry, 93 Hopi: and ethnologists, 82–83; as living ruins, 81–83, 91, 96–97, 113; and promotion of Grand Canyon, 85, 87–90, 107 Hopi House: designed by Mary Ellen Coulter, 85, 87; and Grand Canyon pilgrimage, 96, 98; as marketing facility, 90; as staged authenticity, 88–89 Hot Spring Basin and Crater of the Castle (Jackson), 58 Hutchings, James Mason, 6, 30–31, 33, 36, 45 Hyde, Anne, 57, 59, 103, 107

I Indians. See Native Americans and indigenous cultures indigenous cultures, 5, 82, 219, 233, 238. See also Native Americans Ingold, Tim, 13 inhabited wilderness, 152, 209–16 Interagency Grizzly Bear Study Team, 203 interpretation (park education): and cultural values, 78; and environmental education, 174, 199; limits of, 245; under Tilden, 160, 162–65; in “A Vision for the Future,” 232 Intertribal Bison Cooperative, 239 Ivakhiv, Adrian, 14

J Jackson, William Henry, 53, 56; Hot Spring Basin and Crater of the Castle, 58 Jacobson, David, 249 James, George Wharton, 83–85, 87–89 James P. Beckwourth Mountain Club, 221 James, William, 77 Jarves, James Jackson, 39 Jarvis, Jonathan, 215, 230–31, 249 Jehlen, Myra, 22 Johnson, Robert Underwood, 121 Johnson, Shelton, 221–22, 238

K Keiter, Robert, 202, 205, 207

301

King, Clarence, 36–37, 40, 42, 45 King, Thomas Starr, 27, 34, 42, 45, 47; and Native Americans, 114 Kinsey, Joni, 54, 59, 93 Kipling, Rudyard, 55 Klett, Mark, 192, 235, 237

L Lacey, John, 119, 263n8 Lane, Franklin: and National Parks Portfolio, 123; and Lane Letter, 124–25, 167, 193–94, 265n32 Langford, Nathaniel, 50, 52–56, 59, 61–62, 257n3 Lears, T.J. Jackson, 75, 78 Lefebvre, Henri, 197 Leopold, Aldo, 175–77; and biocentrism, 187 Leopold Report: and ecosystems, 199, 274n14; and fire, 168–69; and Mission 66, 149–51; and myth of primal America, 166, 170–71, 183–84, 186, 252n27; and scientific management, 167–68, 180; and wildlife, 165–66 Leopold, Starker, 153, 184, 269n48. See also Leopold Report Lewis, Ed, 208 Lewis, Sinclair: Open Air, 133 liminal, 8–10, 134, 136, 139, 246–47, 249 Lincoln, Abraham, 21, 45–47, 52 Lincoln, Bruce, 10–11 Linenthal, Edward, 10–11, 249 Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument, 238 Lodge, David M., 228 Long, Charles, 3 Looking Down Yosemite Valley (Bierstadt), 40–41 Ludlow, Fitz Hugh, 34, 37 Lowry, William R., 207, 230 Lummis, Charles, 73, 89, 95 Luong, Q.T.: Winter, Yosemite National Park, 17

M MacCannell, Dean, 81, 83, 88 McCloskey, Michael, 193 McFarland, J. Horace, 121 Man and the Biosphere (MAB), 218. See also, biosphere reserves Manifest Destiny, 23–25, 27; in Bierstadt 38–39, in Watkins, 41–42

302

Index

Marshall, Robert, 175, 177, 186–87 Mason, Kathy, 129, 265n32 Mather, Stephen: alternatives to, 150; and beginnings of NPS, 123–29; and education, 145, 153–54; and Fifth Annual Report, 2, 127–28; and fi re, 168; and tourism, 131, 145, 170; and National Park Idea, 153, 160, 176–77; and outside evaluation, 142; and Moran, 56 Meeker, Joseph W., 220–21 Mills, Enos, 99, 126–27 Minick, Roger: Woman at Inspiration Point, 243–44 Mission 66, 149, 153, 160–72, 175, 180; and wilderness, 177–78 Miwok (Ahwahnecchee): eviction from Yosemite, 6, 26, 30; language, 238; in Yosemite, 113–14, 142–43 Monroe, Harriet, 95–96 Moran, Thomas: Castle Geyser, Upper Geyser Basin, 57; Chasm of the Colorado, 80–81, 93; and establishment of Yellowstone, 61; and Grand Canyon 80–81, 91, 93, 95, 248; Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, 56, 59, 61, 80; Mountain of the Holy Cross, 59; and myth of America, 59; and science, 56, 59; and Yellowstone, 53–54, 56–61; and Yosemite, 27 Morehouse, Barbara, 197–99 Morinis, Alan, 7, 13–14 Mountain of the Holy Cross (Moran), 59 Mount McKinley National Park, 178, 209–10. See also Denali National Park Mount Rushmore National Memorial, 222, 238 Muir, John, 27, 199; and Frederick Jackson Turner, 181–82; and Pinchot, 117–18, 176; and Native Americans, 114; and religion, 121; and Sierra Club, 175, 177; and wilderness, 175; and Yellowstone, 69–70; and Yosemite, 235, 242 Murie, Adolph, 159 Murphy, Thomas, 65, 89 myth: alternative defi nitions of, 7–8; and national park narrative,

7–10, 113–14, 126–28, 130, 134, 193–96, 210, 217, 222–23, 226, 228, 232, 234, 249; of origin (Eliade), 251n3. See also American West, mythology of; Eden; myths of nature and America; Virgin Land myths of nature and America, 126–27; and primal America, 180, 188, 228; and pristine America, 152, 158, 190–91, 226–27; and science, 145, 151, 155–58, 166, 169, 183–84; and wolves, 208

N Nampeyo, 88 Nash, Roderick: Wilderness and the American Mind, 151, 181–82, 271n26 National Academy of Sciences, “Science and the National Parks,” 200. See also Robbins Report National Heritage Areas (NHA), 217, 219–20 National Park Idea, 116–126, 196, 226, 232; and Burns, 16; and confl icting values, 122, 135, 137, 139, 141–43, 226; and religion, 194; and science and education, 155, 158; and subsistence hunting, 212 National Parks: Artist in Residence Programs, 245–46; and automobiles, 129, 131–35; as biodiversity reserves, 12, 15; and democracy, 8, 17–18, 36, 77, 131–36, 222, 249; evolution of, 14–16; as islands, 117, 152, 195–203, 218, 223, 233, 235; as museums, 5, 22, 129–30, 157, 184, 199, 230; nature and culture in, 152, 188, 194, 196, 217–223, 229, 244–45, 248–50; and nationalism, 15, 30, 73, 96–97, 119, 126–27, 129–30, 134, 145, 248–49; and Omnibus Management Act 1998, 201; and origin stories, 1, 51, 62, 116, 128–30; and people of color, 18, 128–141; as playgrounds, 12, 102, 123, 127, 165, 176, 220; as refuges, 78 National Parks: America’s Best Idea, The. See Burns, Ken

Index National Parks (and) Conservation Association (NPCA), 169, 171; “Adjacent Lands Survey: No Park is an Island,” 203, 274n15; National Parks Second Century Commission, “Advancing the National Park Idea,” 226, 232–35, 246, 249–50; “1988 Park Futures,” 171, 174, 184 National Park Service: and active management, 168, 170, 187; and campfi re ritual, 135; and change, 217, 219, 227; compared to USFS, 176; and democracy, 116, 180; and education, 77, 139, 142, 145, 153–54, 162–63; mission, 12, 128, 227, 230, 232; need for, 117–122; Organic Act, 124–25, 166–68; and science, 124–27, 145, 149, 152, 158–59, 167, 203, 231, 274n22; and wilderness, 152, 156, 170–72, 175. See also National Parks and National Park Idea National Parks Portfolio (Yard), 123–24 National Park Service reports: “Management Policies”( 2001, 2006), 231; “National Parks for the 21st Century: The Vail Agenda,” 179, 200, 201; “Natural Resource Challenge,” 200, 231; “Rethinking National Parks for the 21st Century,” 201; “State of the Parks, May 1980,” 203, 274n15 National Register of Historic Places, 196 Native Americans: in Alaska, 209–213, 216; in Glacier, 101, 104–7, 109–10, 112; in Grand Canyon, 81–91, 97, 198; in history of national parks, 238; and Manifest Destiny, 23; in mythology of American West, 14, 23, 25, 30; in mythology of national parks, 39, 74,78–79, 81, 112–15, 136, 141–43, 212; and national parks, 220–22, 238; in national parks, 5, 14–15, 114, 157, 195, 239; and nature, 77; as noble savage, 89; as primitive authenticity, 82–84, 89–90, 109, 212–13;

303

in Southwest, 82, 84; vanishing (also disappearing),74, 82–85, 97–98, 104–5, 107, 113, 123, 141; views of, 36, 74, 82, 89–90, 109, 113–14; in Yellowstone, 63, 114, 143, 239, 241; in Yosemite, 113–14. See also Blackfeet, Eskimo, Havasupai, Hopi, indigenous cultures, Navajo, Nez Perce, Paiute, Zuni natural regulation, 168–70, 184, 192, 200, 203, 233 Navajo, 84, 87, 90, 97–98, 141 Neumann, Mark, 92–93, 99–100, 235, 242–43, 245–49 Newhall, Nancy: This is the American Earth, 185, 187–90, 192 Nez Perce, 63, 114 Nickel, Douglas, 43, 256n50 nonequilibrium dynamics, 228 Norris, Frank, 213–15 Northern Pacific Railroad, 9, 51–53, 56, 59–60, 62–63 Norton, Gale, 2, 231 Novak, Barbara, 62 Nunamuit, 212–216

O Obata, Chirura, 239; “Evening Glow of Yosemite Waterfall,” 240 Old Faithful Inn, 63–67, 98, 124, 172 Olmsted, Frederick, Jr., 142 Olmsted, Frederick, Sr., 28, 47, 48; and democracy, 48, 79, 116, 145 One-and-a-Half Domes (Orland), 244–45, 280n50 Open Air (Lewis), 133 “Oh, Ranger!” (Albright), 135–36, 139, 141, 143, 162 Old Faithful geyser, 64–65, 68–70, 124, 171 Orientalism, 75, 78, 84, 95, 98, 109 Orland, Ted: One-and-a-Half Domes, 244–45, 280n50 outdoors movement, 117, 122, 129. See also great outdoors overcivilization, 75, 77, 106, 186

P pageants, 1, 51, 143–44, 173, 267n6 Paiute, 143 Panama-Pacific International Exposition, 73, 123, 129

304

Index

panorama, 256n48; Bierstadt’s use of, 38–39; Watkins’ use of 43–44 pantheism, 189, 191 people of color, 18, 220–21, 241 phenomenological-hermeneutical approach, 13 pilgrimage: and automobiles, 131, 134; and boundaries, 196, 222; and change, 224–26, 230–31, 235–50; and contestation, 10–12, 135; and education (interpretation), 77, 145, 163; and environmentalism, 171–72, 174, 194; in Glacier, 106, 109, 110–12; in Grand Canyon, 96–101; and nationalism, 116, 122, 126; and national parks, 8–10, 14–16; and nature, 152, 155; and primeval America, 145, 158; and space, 12; and rituals, 135–44; and tourism, 6–7, 73, 253n38; and transformation, 8–10, 59, 101, 115, 247, 249–50, 253n38; and Turner, 8–10; in Yellowstone, 52, 55, 67, 70; in Yosemite, 33, 37, 45–46, 51 Pinchot, Gifford: and USFS, 124; and Muir, 117–18, 175, 176; and utilitarian conservation, 102, 119–21 Point Reyes National Seashore, 213 Pomeroy, Earl, 84 Powell, John Wesley, 5, 80, 91–92; and geology and religion, 92–93 predatory animals, 125, 141, 156, 159, 169, 226, 275n48 “Progress of Culture, The” (Emerson), 76

R railroads: and development of national parks, 123, 128–30; lands, 197, 206; and Manifest Destiny, 23–24. See also Atchison, Topeka, Santa Fe Railway; Central Pacific Railroad; Great Northern Railroad; Northern Pacific Railroad Reamer, Robert, 63–66 recreational tourism, 159, 175–76, 179–80 Reiger, John, 103 religion: defi ned, 3–4; earth religion, 180, 189, 191; ecospirituality,

151, 192; nature religion, 3, 145, 188–89, 191–92; and science, 133, 145–46, 151–52, 180 restoration: environmental, 157, 180, 184, 192, 208, 217–18, 229, 278n20; of human well-being, 145, 163, 181, 185–86 Richards, Mary, 62–63, 67 Ricoeur, Paul, 247–250 Rinehart, Mary Roberts, 111–12 Robbins Report (“A Report by the Advisory Committee to the National Park Service on Research, submitted by the National Academy of Science— National Research Council”), 149–51, 165, 167–68, 175, 180, 184, 200 Robbins, Williams, 153, 167. See also Robbins Report Rocky Mountain National Park, 2, 99, 119, 126, 169, 241 Rocky Mountains, Lander Peak (Bierstadt), 38–39; and Native Americans, 39 Roosevelt, Theodore: and Antiquities Act, 119–20; and conservation, 102–3, 115; and frontier, 99, 104; and gender, 111, 263n108; and Grand Canyon, 96; and strenuous living and good citizenship, 77, 83, 98, 102–6 Ross-Bryant, Lynn, 251n5, 254n48 Rothman, Hal, 133–34, 176 Runte, Alfred, 46, 62, 129, 157, 173 Ruskin, John, 28–29, 37, 40, 56, 58

S Said, Edward, 84 Sallnow, Michael J., 10, 14, 253n36 Sargent, Shirley, 172, 174 Schama, Simon, 26–27, 47 Schullery, Paul, 54, 141, 184 science: and education, 124, 153–54, 158–59, 162, 168; and ethics, 205; and ethnology, 82; and geology, 59, 91, 120, 127; and interpretation, 164; limits of in national parks, 156, 162, 165; and measurement, 29, 62–63; and Mission 66, 161–62; and mythic story of America, 156–57, 166; and NPS, 124–25, 127, 149, 153, 158,

Index 160, 274n22; and NPS origin story, 168; and religion, 35–37, 60, 91–92, 127, 133, 145–46, 151–52, 180; and Robbins Report, 167; and value, 228 “Science and the National Parks” (National Academy of Sciences), 200 Scott, Douglas, 181–82 Sears, John, 6, 92, 99 “See America First”: and anti-ethnicity, 74; and Fisher Stanley Harris, 73; and NPS, 73, 116, 123; and railroads, 73, 79, 81, 105 Sellars, Richard, 125, 162, 178, 184, 193, 200, 231, 274n22 Sequoia National Park, 229–30 Shaffer, Marguerite, 73, 124, 130–31, 135 Shepherd, Paul, 91 Shields, Rob, 13, 197 Shrine of the Ages, The, 91, 95, 101, 262n76 Sierra Club, 175–77, 181, 185–93; and Wilderness Conferences, 177–89 sight sacralization, 81, 84, 90, 103, 105 Silent Spring (Carson), 151, 193 Simpson, Alan, 207 Smith, Jonathan Z., 253n39 Soja, Edward, 197 Solnit, Rebecca, 192, 235–38, 241, 244, 249 Soukup, Michael, 200 sourdough miners, 209 split vision, 92–93, 95 staged authenticity, 88 Stagner, Harold, 165 Stegner, Wallace, 92, 182, 183, 271n29 Stehekin River Forest (Adams), 189–90 stereoptic photograph, 44–45, 256n50 Stewart, Kathleen, 225, 235, 242 Stickley, Gustave, 64, 85 strenuous living, 77, 83, 98, 102, 105–6, 110 sublime: and God, 22, 34; and Burke, 28; and culture, 22; geological, 91;in Grand Canyon, 80, 91, 94–95, 101; and science, 36; and scientific sublime, 62; in Yellowstone, 50, 54, 133; in Yosemite, 33, 37

305

subsistence: in national parks, 152, 209, 211–217, 219; Regional Councils (SRC), 214–15 Sullivan, Louis, 64, 76–77, 97

T Targhee National Forest, 206 Taylor, Bron, 151 Tertiary History of the Grand Canyon District (Dutton), 80, 91, 93–95 This is the American Earth (Adams and Newhall), 185, 187–90 Tichi, Cecilia, 54, 59, 67–68 Tilden, Freeman, 141, 160, 162–65, 184 Timbisha Shoshone Homeland Act, 214 Tlingit and Haida Indians of Alaska v. United States, 210 Toll, Roger, 2 Trachtenberg, Alan, 84 Turner, Frederick Jackson, 70, 102, 117, 181–83, 188 Turner, Victor, 8–10 Twain, Mark, 40–41 Tweed, Thomas, 3 Tweed, William C., 225–27, 229–30

U Udall, Stewart, 165–68, 182–83, 187, 271n29 ungulates: and natural regulation, 169; over-abundance of, 159, 165–66, 169–70 United States Forest Service (USFS): and environmental issues, 204, 206; interagency work, 198, 202, 203; and people of color, 221; rivalry with NPS, 118–20, 124, 130; and wilderness, 149, 175–77 utilitarian conservation, 116, 118–119, 120; and Muir, 175; and national parks, 121–22, 125–27; as wise use, 102, 120, 150

V Vail Agenda, 200. See also NPS reports: National Parks for the 21st Century vernacular and official discourse, 14, 134, 153, 160, 173–74, 193; and change, 114, 150–52; as

306

Index

confl icting voices, 12, 150, 245; and public memory, 11, 248 Virgin Land, 105, 116, 183, 209, 227, 235 “Vision for the Future” (GYCC), 204, 207 Voyageurs National Park, 213

W Warner, Charles Dudley, 80 Washburn-Doan Exhibition, 1, 50–54, 59–60, 62, 65, 136 Watkins, Carlton, 27, 38, 41–45; and art and science, 42; and establishment of Yosemite, 45–46; The Grisley Giant, 43–44; and the railroad, 42; and science and myth, 45 Watt, James, 230 Weigle, Marta, 81, 84, 97 Wheeler, Olin, 65 White, Richard, 5 Whitehead, Alfred North, 4, 188, 192 Whitman, Walt, 76, 188; Democratic Vistas, 76 Whitney, Josiah, 42, 45, 47 Whittlesey, Charles, 97–98 wilderness: and Alaska, 209, 215; and antimodernism, 186; conquest of, 183; discourse, 150–51; and Glacier pilgrimage, 110–12; and humans, 218, 224–26, 229, 237, 242; Idea, 182, 271n22; Movement, 149–52, 157, 175, 180, 187, 193–94; and Nash, 182; and Native Americans, 106–7, 112–14, 192; and NPS, 152, 156, 170–72, 175–76, 178, 183, 193; and religion, 151, 164, 175, 185, 187, 192, 225; and tourism, 106, 109; and USFS, 176; without humans, 105, 112–13, 186–88, 244. See also inhabited wilderness, Sierra Club, Wilderness Act, Wilderness Society Wilderness Act, 149, 150, 156, 165, 175–87; and defi nition of wilderness, 179; and Echo Park Dam, 177; and mythic America, 151, 181; and NPS, 178; and role of science, 180; and separation from humans, 186–87; and view of nature, 179

Wilderness and the American Mind (Nash), 151, 182, 271n26 Wilderness bill. See Wilderness Act wilderness myth, 25, 96, 109, 122, 137, 193, 197, 220; as construction, 4–5, 184, 186; as Eden, 180–185, 237; as frontier, 103, 127, 180–185; and Old Faithful Inn, 65–66; as primal America, 2, 26–27, 41, 46, 103, 127, 129, 163, 184, 191–92, 212–13, 251n3; as pristine, 103, 105–7, 113, 227, 242; preservation of 102, 122, 149, 160, 175; as rejuvenating, 47, 103, 105–6, 118, 127, 182—83 and vanishing Indians, 105. See also Wilderness Act Wilderness Society, 175–77; Platform, 177 Wildlife Management: and the Leopold Report, 165 Williams, Terry Tempest, 18 Williams, William Carlos, 188 Wilton, Andrew, 92 Winter, Yosemite National Park (Luong), 17 Wirth, Conrad: and Mission 66, 149, 153, 160–65; and National Park Idea, 160–61; and science, 161–62; and wilderness, 149, 170, 176–78, 271n17 Wise Use. See utilitarian conservation Wolfe, Byron, 192, 235, 237 wolves, 18, 169, 207–8, 275–76n48 Woman at Inspiration Point (Minick), 243–44 Wrangell-St. Elias National Park, 215 Wright, George, 155–60, 165, 175; Fauna I, 155, 162, 165; and Hispanic heritage, 221; and mythic America, 157

Y Yard, Robert Sterling: Book of the National Parks, 126–29; National Parks Portfolio, 123–24; and nation, 130–32; and Wilderness Society Platform, 177 Yellowstone National Park: architecture in, 63–67; campfi re origin story, 51; and confl ict of industrial and national values, 51–52,

Index 64, 67–70; establishment of, 21, 52–53; as hell and wonderland, 54–55, 61, 69–70; local visitors in, 67; Master Plan 1973, 170–71; and Native Americans, 3, 114; and tourism, 62–63. See also bears: ecosystem management and Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative, 275n27 Yosemite Falls, 29, 32, 35, 37, 139, 144 Yo-Semite Falls (Ayres), 30, 32 Yosemite National Park: and Ahwanee Hotel, 144; and art, 38–45, 188–91, 235; and change, 229, 235–45; establishment of, 21, 45–49, 254n1; Euro-American

307

discovery of, 6, 26; and Firefall, 137–139, 172, 174; and Hetch Hetchy, 18, 117, 120–22, 129; and Native Americans, 113–14, 142–43, 157, 238; as New World, 15, 17, 27–30, 42, 62; pilgrimage in, 32–33; rituals in, 135–43; and science and religion, 35; as symbol of nation, 47; and tourism, 30–37, 172–74 Yosemite: The Fate of Heaven (Else), 237 Yosemite Valley from Glacier Point (Hahn), 34

Z Zahniser, Howard, 177, 181, 186 Zuni, 82, 84, 261n43