TO HEAR TELL OF IT, our National Park System includes a host of parks unworthy of their name. So said a former chairmen of the congressional House subcommittee responsible for national park system oversight. So also said a former National Park Service (N PS) director, some NPS professionals, and citizen supporters.
Former subcommittee chairman James Hansen (R-Utah) has said, "The question is not whether to close some parks but how to accomplish this goal." The late ranking minority member and former chairman Bruce Vento (D-Minn.) once characterized park closure legislation as a means to "ensure that only outstanding resources are included in the system." Former director James Ridenour wrote a book around the theme that the National Park System has been "compromised" and drained of its financial blood by unworthy parks. (On the latter point, no concrete evidence exists to support his view, and at least three other former directors disagree.)
In the early planning for my book on our National Park System, I thought about writing a chapter on "hit lists." I did not write the chapter after I had collected a composite list of more than 120 parks. Such lists are wrongheaded and represent a serious threat to the long-term integrity of the National Park System. If longtime park professionals and friends of the parks as respected as the late Rep. Bruce Vento want to see parks divested, imagine such a list when it has been influenced by the property rights, and other anti-government groups.
The argument is made that in recent times older criteria governing the entry of parks into the system have been compromised or abandoned. The fact is no congressionally approved criteria exist. Each new park has had to pass or fail on its own merit, as the consequence of a unique set of factors and forces surrounding a particular site at a specific time in history. Parks happen because a constituency builds a level of support upon which Congress and the President then act. Many proposed parks never happen .
But what about park units such as Steamtown National Historic Site in Pennsylvania, a former rail yard, and the cause célèbre of pork barrel parks? Critics say that Steamtown was "railroaded" through Congress as a rider on an appropriations bill. That legislative maneuver is a well used (bipartisan) feature of the American political process, although, interestingly, Steamtown is the only park to have gotten into the system that way. In a historic irony, Congressman Hansen used that same tactic to add the park closure bill to pending budget legislation even after the bill had been defeated on the House floor. It was eventually removed, but park advocates fear that some Member who agrees in principle with Hansen may resurrect it on another occasion.
The timing and circumstances surrounding the addition of a park into the National Park System are as much a part of the history and substance of that park as its physical resources. The last-chance opportunity taken in the 1960s to save the seashores of this nation "a success story of epic proportions" happened as the result of a bipartisan movement to save public access to rapidly developing coastal areas. The urban national recreation areas of the 1970s grew out of a new sensitivity to the central cities, during a Republican presidency. Today those parks are high on Hansen's hit list.
Today's park system is a remarkable reflection of the environmental diversity and cultural pluralism of our nation. It was not planned according to a preconceived scheme. It could not have been produced by even the most well-intentioned technicians and bureaucrats. But tearing it to pieces by second-guessing decisions made by an earlier Congress is to rupture the integrity of our heritage.
Revising history is inconsistent with honoring it.
Our national park system contains sites and resources whose values can be framed as analogues to those embodied in the Declaration of Independence and in our Constitution. Words such as life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are tangibly manifest in places such as Yellowstone, Independence Hall, and the Statue of Liberty. Where better to celebrate free speech and the right of assembly than at Women's Rights National Historic Site? Or the right of equal protection at Brown v. Board of Education National Historic Site? Or the presidency at the homes of Truman, Eisenhower, or Kennedy?
Similar permanent values are found in wilderness and in preservation of the diverse life forms at hundreds of park units, including many in urban settings. Work to preserve for future generations the cultural artifacts of our forebears is not a process with an expiration date. Our National Park System is a living legacy that does not belong to one generation. It belongs to the future as fully as it belongs to us now. If the concept of a National Park System to preserve values for future generations has any meaning at all, it must require a dedication to its integrity.
We cannot respect its integrity and tear it apart at the same time.
But, say some, we do not intend to rip apart the system. All we want to do is eliminate the parks that got there because a previous Congress or President was inattentive. The list will be short, "you know the ones," and no "real" parks will be harmed. Besides, if we get rid of some parks, more money will be available for those that remain.
Neither argument stands up to scrutiny. One person's "little list" added to others from friends and foes alike could easily add up to something disastrous. Rep. Hansen said he had a list of 150. And even if all parties could agree that a site might be administered by a state, how many local governments these days will voluntarily agree to manage a former unit of the park system without getting federal dollars to do it? A few years ago the then governor of South Dakota offered to take over park units in his state provided South Dakota also got the money to do it. Even more recently, the governor of Arizona, emboldened by his state's operation of a small portion of Grand Canyon during a nearly month-long government shutdown, has proposed that Arizona permanently take over management of Grand Canyon. The governor offered no clue on how his state would finance Grand Canyon's then $12-million to $15-million annual budget and deal with documented capital needs then amounting to more than $123 million.
Or take the recent divestiture of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, a site in Washington, D.C., whose leaky roof for years caused headaches for National Park Service administrators. NPS got rid of the leaky roof, but did it keep the funds ordinarily appropriated for the Kennedy Center? Not one cent!
One of the historical facts behind proposals to divest parks is that some Park Service professionals have for decades ridiculed and disparaged sites that did not fit their personal model of a proper park. Several directors, beginning with the first, Stephen Mather, and the second, Horace Albright, have sought to purge the system of then-existing units deemed unworthy. Those and later efforts were responsible for eliminating at least 20 parks from the system, some of them finally dropped only after years of deliberate neglect.
Objecting to a proposed addition to the National Park System before and while Congress is considering it is altogether appropriate. People can honestly disagree on the merits or extent of a proposed park. Experts often disagree, and conflicting opinions are properly brought to bear on the Congressional process we call democracy. However, once Congress acts and a bill is signed by the President, it is the non-debatable trust of the National Park Service to administer the law "fairly, consistently, and with due professional care." The position of some National Park Service professionals who want to "hit" parks is indefensible.
Badmouthing parks has consequences. Even if not a single divestiture actually takes place, the potential exists for permanent damage to the image and self-esteem of parks and their staffs and their perception and value to the public by telling the people the site is not worthy of their taxes or their philanthropy and by telling future staff it is not a place that merits the level of professional care afforded "real" parks.
Our park system should be treated as a physical analog to our Constitution. It reflects values just as sacred to our national life and character.
Supporters of the National Park System need to find comfort in the processes by which parks are approved. That process surely can be improved to guide the future, but it is the process that should be changed, not the parks already in the system. No park closure commission is needed, now or ever. We should fight for the parks' survival, "all of them," with every resource at our command. The integrity of the entire park system is at risk.
This article was originally published in the March 1996 issue of National Parks Magazine and is reprinted here with the permission of the National Parks Conservation Association and has been updated in 2007 to reflect the passage of time since then. The arguments made here, however, have not changed.
(Updated 10-10-07)
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