National Parks: America's Best Idea

Pulitzer Prize author and environmentalist Wallace Stegner called our national parks "the best idea we ever had." With 391 units covering more than 84 million acres and comprised of 58 national parks plus 333 national monuments, battlefields, military parks, historical parks, historic sites, lakeshores, seashores, recreation areas, scenic rivers, recreational trails, and the White House, there's something for everyone. The National Park Service has a presence in 49 of the 50 states, the District of Columbia, American Samoa, Guam, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands. Only Delaware is unrepresented.

The system employs 20,000 diverse professionals, augmented by 145,000 volunteers. Total recreational visitors to the National Parks in 2006 was an astonishing 272,623,980! The largest park is Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve in Alaska (which I've been to twice) which stretches 13.2 million acres. The smallest is Thaddeus Kosciuszko National Memorial in Pennsylvania at 0.02 of an acre. If you'd like to see an interactive map of every state with its national park holdings, go here.


The above insignia was authorized as the official National Park Service emblem by the Secretary of the Interior on July 20, 1951. The Sequoia tree and bison represent vegetation and wildlife, the mountains and water represent scenic and recreational values, and the arrowhead represents historical and archeological values.

Yellowstone was the first national park, established by an Act signed by President Ulysses S. Grant on March 1, 1872, as the Nation's first national park. The National Park Service was created by an Act signed by President Woodrow Wilson on August 25, 1916.

I LOVE the national parks. I've been to 36 of them, and more than once to 22 of those. I've also been to dozens and dozens of the other holdings over the years. I've backpacked in 11 national parks, hiked in 17 others, paddled 5 of them, and camped in 17 of them.

It is with great expectations I await a PBS extravaganza: "The National Parks: America's Best Idea," which premieres on September 27, 2009, a 6-part, 12-hour series tracing the birth of the national park system in the mid-1800s and showing its evolution over nearly 150 years. Using archival photographs, first-person accounts of historical characters, personal memories and analysis from more than 40 interviews, and stunning cinematography, the series chronicles the steady addition of new parks through the stories of the people who helped create them and save them from destruction.

The series is directed by legendary Ken Burns and co-produced with his longtime colleague, Dayton Duncan, who also wrote the script, and is the story of an idea as uniquely American as the Declaration of Independence and just as radical: That the most special places in the nation should be preserved, not for royalty or the rich, but for everyone. This duo has given us marvelous PBS documentaries on jazz and baseball in the past, and Dayton relates how he was 30 seconds into his pitch to Ken for this series when Ken interrupted and said, "When can we get started?" Obviously an easy sell this time! And now, after 6 years, it's almost here.

Filmed over the course of more than six years in some of nature's most spectacular locales -- from Acadia to Yosemite, Yellowstone to the Grand Canyon, the Everglades of Florida to the Gates of the Arctic in Alaska -- the documentary is nonetheless a story of people from every conceivable background -- rich and poor; famous and unknown; soldiers and scientists; natives and newcomers; idealists, artists and entrepreneurs; people who were willing to devote themselves to saving some precious portion of the land they loved, and in doing so reminded their fellow citizens of the full meaning of democracy. It is a story of struggle and conflict, high ideals and crass opportunism, stirring adventure and enduring inspiration -- set against breathtaking backdrops.

"Making this film was one of the greatest joys of my life," said Dayton Duncan, who has visited all of America's 58 national parks and who is the author of the companion book to be published by Alfred Knopf. "Each park is unique and has its own fascinating historical story. But they are all connected by the transformative idea that they belong to each of us, providing a shared place that lives in the memory of every individual and every family that has visited them over the years. And they are connected by the notion that individual Americans, in the best possible example of democracy, worked to make sure that future generations could enjoy them."

"There was a sense that in Europe, you had the Roman coliseum or Notre Dame or the Cologne cathedral, but we didn't have anything like that in America," said Dayton Duncan. "But we did have these spectacular natural landscapes that were as unique and ancient as anything in the Old World. So they would become our treasures. They would be the source of our national pride. But unlike in Europe, they did not belong to monarchs or nobility. They belong to everyone."

And that's what I love the most. These wondrous places are MINE! (and yours, of course.)

Here are some sneak previews from the movie series,

Like the idea of freedom itself, the national park idea has been constantly tested, is constantly evolving and is inherently full of contradictory tensions: between individual rights and the community, the local and the national; between preservation and exploitation, the sacred and the profitable; between one generation's immediate desires and the next generation's legacy.

As with all of Burns's films, there will be an extensive educational component, an interactive Web site that provides more information about the film, the parks and related issues, as well as a large-scale community engagement initiative. Four years ago, WETA and Florentine Films, with generous support from the Evelyn and Walter Haas, Jr. Fund, launched the Untold Stories project, designed to bring to light stories from the national parks focusing on the role of African Americans, Asian Americans, Hispanic Americans and Native Americans in the creation and protection of individual parks and to engage new and traditionally under-served audiences in the educational richness of the national parks.

Accompanying the series will be a companion book, written by Dayton Duncan and introduced by Ken Burns, which will be published by Alfred A. Knopf, Burns's longtime publisher. "THE NATIONAL PARKS, like our previous collaborations with Ken Burns, will be a signature publishing event," said Sonny Mehta, Chairman of the Knopf Publishing Group. "It is the first accounting of the national parks to weave together dramatic narrative, personal testimony and breathtaking images. Indeed, of all the books we have published in partnership with Ken, this may be the most visually spectacular."

So why not get out there now! Choose one or more of these wondrous locales and make an adventure for yourself. Revel in the scenery and wildlife. Grab a piece of history. Get off the main drag and find some solitude. Whether a vacation or a weekend trip, go experience America's best ideas -- they belong to YOU!