Ken Burns, on The National Parks, America's Best Idea

Chris and I got hooked a couple of weeks ago on the Ken Burns multi-day special The National Parks, America's Best Idea. The photography was stunning, and since we're both national park fanatics, the early episodes were (to me) very interesting. I believe that I missed the last night or two.

It's interesting that some things never change: America in the late nineteenth century was as acquisitive and ecologically unaware as most people in America are today. Arizona and its rapacious water and development industry was, if anything, worse in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Grand Canyon almost didn't become a national park because of some developer/miner from Arizona who became a senator. I don't remember his name, but that's OK, because he doesn't actually deserve mention. What an exemplar of a type that still exists in this state--someone who thinks that all we need is more water and development, that the landscape means little, except the view.

Anyhow, it's also interesting that Niagra Falls was used through the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as the poster child for how private development and tourist exploitation can wreck scenes of superb natural interest and beauty. The watchword seemed to be "don't turn Yosemite or Yellowstone into Niagra Falls." It was this attitude on the part of the public that was certainly a catalyst for the development of the national parks.

It was also a lesson in the way that individuals can move the national conversation and will in such a way that good things happen. Of course, John Muir was that spokesperson for Yosemite and Yellowstone, and interestingly, became the patron saint of most of the early national parks. Also, the first National Park Service director, whose name I can't now recall, used his advertising and promotional sense to popularize the parks to the nation at the critical time.

Finally, the early twentieth century also saw the birth of use-conservation as well as the classic Sierra Club environmental movement. Gifford Pinchot, the force behind the National Forest system, had a different, multi-use, idea, that probably saved much more acreage of wilderness than the National Park system did. So, are the National Forests America's second best idea?