The National Park Service Centennial Essay Series
The NPS Centennial Essay Series was one of the George Wright Society's contributions to the 2016 centennial of the founding of the National Park Service. The essay series encouraged serious reflection on critical park-related issues across the entire spectrum of cultural and natural resource disciplines. The essays challenged the agency to re-examine its assumptions by bringing voices into the centennial conversation that represent a broad range of viewpoints, including those not traditionally part of the discourse on America’s national parks.
Launched in 2007, the series ran, one essay per issue, through August 2016, with a wrap-up retrospective in December 2016. The essays are available for download below.
December 2016
Final Centennial Thoughts
Dwight T. Pitcaithley and Rolf Diamant
August 2016
Second Sentence for a Second Century: Integrating the Mission of the National Park Service
Denis P. Galvin
April 2016
Worth and Value in 21st-Century Parks: The Critical Role of Public Financing
Duncan Morrow
December 2015
Holding Course
Michael Soukup
September 2015
The NPS Franchise: A Better Way to Protect Our Heritage
Holly Fretwell
May 2015
Planning for Permanent Emergency: “Triage” as a Strategy for Managing Cultural Resources Threatened by Climate Change
Michelle L. Berenfeld
December 2014
Making the Transition to the Third Era of Natural Resources Management
Nathan L. Stephenson
August 2014
Professionalism and its Discontents
Diane Barthel-Bouchier
April 2014
From Civil War to Civil Rights
Marty Blatt
December 2013
An Enlightened Beginning: The National Park Service and the American Latino Heritage
Joseph P. Sánchez and Angélica Sánchez-Clark
August 2013
Considerations of Culture, Community, Change, and the Centennial
M. Melia Lane-Kamahele
May 2013
NPS Design Tradition in the 21st Century
Ethan Carr
December 2012
What Should NPS Tell Visitors (and Congress) about Climate Change?
Philip Cafaro
August 2012
Beyond the 59th Park: Reforming the Nomenclature of the US National Park System
David Harmon
May 2012
The Park Idea as Catalyst and Conscience
George B. Hartzog III
December 2011
Revisiting the Organic Act: Can It Meet the Next Century’s Conservation Challenges?
Robert B. Keiter
May 2011
Projecting America’s Best Ideals: International Engagement and the National Park Service
Brent A. Mitchell
December 2010
This Land is Your Land, This Land is My Land: People and Public Lands Redux
Carolyn Finney
August 2010
Whose America? Whose Idea? Making "America's Best Idea" Reflect New American Realities
John J. Reynolds
April 2010
An Idea in Trouble: Thoughts about the Future of Traditional National Parks in the United States
William C. Tweed
December 2009
Ethnography in a National Park Service Second Century
Jerry L. Rogers
August 2009
Diary for a Second Century: A Journey across America’s National Park System in Search of its Future
Rolf Diamant
April 2009
George Melendez Wright and the National Park Idea
Dayton Duncan
December 2008
Designing Ocean Parks for the Next Century
Gary E. Davis
July 2008
Reassessing the National Park Service and the National Park System
Janet A. McDonnell
April 2008
The National Park Service and Civic Engagement
Edward T. Linenthal
December 2007
Robin Winks on the Evolution and Meaning of the Organic Act
With an Afterword by Denis P. Galvin
July 2007
On the Brink of Greatness: National Parks and the Next Century
Dwight T. Pitcaithley