- Subject: NPS Morning Report - Saturday, June 1, 1996
- Date: Sat, 1 Jun 1996
CUMULATIVE SUMMARY OF ALL MORNING REPORT QUOTES: AUGUST, 1995 - JUNE, 1996
Release #9
"I earnestly recommend the establishment of a Bureau of National Parks. Such
legislation is essential to the proper management of those wondrous
manifestations of Nature, so startling and so beautiful that everyone
recognizes the obligations of the Government to preserve them for the
edification and recreation of the people...every consideration of patriotism
and 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 our people. The
first step in that direction is the establishment of a responsible bureau,
which shall take upon itself the burden of supervising the parks and of making
recommendations as to the best method of improving their accessibility and
usefulness."
- William Howard Taft
"There is nothing so American as our national parks. The scenery and wildlife
are native. The fundamental idea behind the parks is native. It is, in brief,
that the country belongs to the people, that it is in process of making for
the enrichment of the lives of all of us. The parks stand as the outward
symbol of this great human principle."
- Franklin D. Roosevelt
"The young people of today are the lawmakers, the scientists, the
industrialists, the conservationists, the cattlemen, and the lumbermen of
tomorrow. It is vitally important that they learn today the values of the
national parks, and the principles underlying their preservation. For they
will have the say tomorrow as to what becomes of these properties of the
people."
- Newton B. Drury
Director, 1940-1951
"The Everglades is a test. If we pass it, we get to keep the planet."
- Marjory Stoneman Douglas
"The parks do not belong to one state or to one section. They have become
democratized. The Yosemite, the Yellowstone, the Grand Canyon are national
properties in which every citizen has a vested interest; they belong as much
to the man of Massachusetts, of Michigan, of Florida, as they do to the people
of California, of Wyoming, and of Arizona....Who will gainsay that the parks
contain the highest potentialities of national pride, national contentment,
and national health? A visit inspires love of country; begets contentment;
engenders pride of possession; contains the antidote for national
restlessness...He is a better citizen with a keener appreciation of the
privilege of living here who has toured the national parks."
- Stephen Tyng Mather
Director, 1917-1929
"Our primary contribution to national defense lies in the fact that the
great areas of the National Park System inspire in the people a pride of
country and serve in a direct way to crystallize a love of its institutions.
In short, our national shrines rank among the first of the irreplaceable
values that we must defend, for they are America just as are the people who
live around them. Someone has said, in speaking of national parks and
historic sites, that men will die gladly for their country; and there devolves
upon us a singular obligation to preserve a country worth dying for."
- Newton B. Drury
Director, 1940-1951?
"Our national parks system is a national museum. Its purpose is to preserve
forever...certain areas of extraordinary scenic magnificence in a condition of
primitive nature. Its recreational value is also very great, but recreation
is not distinctive of the system. The function which alone distinguishes the
national parks...is the museum function made possible only by the parks'
complete conservation."
- Robert Sterling Yard, 1923
"I do not want to see our National Parks robbed of any of their beauty on the
ground that it must be done in order to secure money sufficient to pay the
expenses of maintaining them. I do not want to see any of the natural
resources taken from them that would in any way mar their beauty. I think it
would be the best money that Congress could spend, to place the parks in a
condition that they can be enjoyed by the people of the United States."
- Senator Reed Smoot (R-Utah)
Addressing the 1916 Conference
on National Parks
"The most valuable asset the Service has ever had is the morale of its
employees. I have said that the Superintendent is a dedicated man; all his
permanent staff and all the temporary rangers and ranger-naturalists are
dedicated men, too...or they would have quit long since. Ever since it was
organized the Service has been able to do its difficult, complex, and highly
expert job with great distinction because it could count on this ardor and
devotion. The forty-hour week means nothing in a national park. Personnel
have always worked sixteen hours a day and seven days a week whenever such
labor was necessary. Superintendent, rangers, engineers, summer staff, fire
lookouts - they all drop their specialties to join a garbage-disposal crew or
a rescue party, to sweep up tourist litter, to clean a defouled spring, to do
anything else that has to be done but can't be paid for. They are the most
courteous and the most patient men in the United States and maybe once a week
several of them get a full night's sleep. If you undermine their morale, you
will destroy the Service."
- Historian Bernard DeVoto, Harpers
Magazine, 1953 [Editor's note: DeVoto
wrote at a time when almost all staff were
in fact men. His perspective in 1995
would undoubtedly be more balanced]
"Policy without funding is just conversation."
- George Hartzog, Director, 1964 - 1972
"Most of the people who visit the parks, whether they realize it or not or
whether they put it into words, are impelled to visit them because of the
quest for a supreme experience. The gleam of glaciers on a mighty mountain;
the shimmering beauty of a lake indescribably blue, resting in the crater of
an extinct volcano; the thunder and mist of water falling over sculptured
granite cliffs; the colorful chapter in the Book of Time revealed by the
strata of a mile-high canyon gashed by a rushing river; the sight of strange
new plants and animals living in natural adaptation to their environment and
to each other; the roar of surf waging its eternal battle with the land; the
silence that hangs over the ruins of the habitations of forgotten peoples; the
lengthening shadows of the towering sequoias - these and a thousand other
vivid impressions are at the heart of the experience that national park
visitors travel many miles to seek. All else that they do or that we do in
the national parks is incidental. If we can remember this, we can remain true
to our high calling as trustees for the greater things of America."
- Newton B. Drury, Director, 1940-1951?
"Most of the people who visit the parks, whether they realize it or not or
whether they put it into words, are impelled to visit them because of the
quest for a supreme experience. The gleam of glaciers on a mighty mountain;
the shimmering beauty of a lake indescribably blue, resting in the crater of
an extinct volcano; the thunder and mist of water falling over sculptured
granite cliffs; the colorful chapter in the Book of Time revealed by the
strata of a mile-high canyon gashed by a rushing river; the sight of strange
new plants and animals living in natural adaptation to their environment and
to each other; the roar of surf waging its eternal battle with the land; the
silence that hangs over the ruins of the habitations of forgotten peoples; the
lengthening shadows of the towering sequoias - these and a thousand other
vivid impressions are at the heart of the experience that national park
visitors travel many miles to seek. All else that they do or that we do in
the national parks is incidental. If we can remember this, we can remain true
to our high calling as trustees for the greater things of America."
- Newton B. Drury, Director, 1940-1951
"Americans have a national treasure in the Yellowstone Park, and they should
guard it jealously. Nature has made her wildest patterns here, has brought
the boiling waters from her greatest depths to the peaks which bear eternal
snow, and set her masterpiece with pools like jewels. Let use respect her
moods, and let the beasts she nurtures in her bosom live, and when the man
from Oshkosh writes his name with a blue pencil on her sacred face, let him
spend six months where the scenery is circumscribed and entirely artificial."
- Frederic Remington, from Pony Tracks,
1898
"Thousands of people go to the national parks because they want the things
which are peculiar to the primeval wilderness and, what is more, peculiar to a
particular wilderness - such as Glacier or Yellowstone or Grand Canyon or some
other one. To make possible the great joy to be found in the infinite variety
of the wilderness - not to thwart the desire to discover more and more of its
ways - and the moral obligation to leave it unimpaired for new discoveries
tomorrow, these are the functions of the national parks in our general scheme
of wilderness use. Our national parks are a great philosophical venture in
which we are attempting to pry open for ourselves the intricate and delicately
balanced system of wilderness values essential to full and intelligent
enjoyment of the wilderness. The success of the venture is going to hinge
largely upon our understanding of the values at stake, our knowledge of
recreational psychology, and our ability to meet the biological requirements
of wilderness management."
- Ben Thompson, "Fauna of the National
Parks of the United States", 1935
"The abiding purpose of a national park is to bring man and his environment
into closer harmony. The ultimate hope that a delicate balance between
preservation and use can be maintained will depend upon the ability of the
Park Service to promote, and the willingness of the visitor to accept,
perception as the highest form of park use. Every visitor reacts to the
beauty of the natural scene or the stirring drama of the historical past, if
only passively. Salvation for the parks lies in the hope that the park
visitor can be actively stimulated, by the immediacy of his surroundings and
the substance of the interpretive programs, to perceive and treasure the
natural and historical processes through which the land and all living things
have achieved their form and by which they maintain their dependent
existence."
- William C. Everhart, "The National
Park Service", 1972?
"We who work for historical agencies do not own the sites. We are trustees
for them. They are ours to restore and manage and interpret because earlier
generations saved them for us; so we, in turn, have an obligation to future
generations who have an equal claim to that heritage, Our trusteeship places
upon us an ethical commitment to accuracy in restoration, truth in
interpretation, and protection for the next generation. The financial support
we receive from the public in gifts, admission fees, tax exemptions and
government payments reinforces our obligations to the people. We do not meet
that obligation just by saving and restoring a historic site. Only when the
essential meaning of the site and of the people and events associated with it
is communicated to the visitor can we truly say that we have met our
responsibilities."
- William Alderson and Shirley Payne
Low, "Interpretation of Historic Sites,",
1976
"Ever since I have been old enough to be cynical I have been visiting national
parks, and they are a cure for cynicism...They were cooked in the same alembic
as other land laws...but they came out as someting different. Absolutely
American, absolutely democratic, they reflect us at our best rather than our
worst. Without them, millions of American lives, including mine, would have
been poorer. The world would have been poorer."
- Author Wallace Stegner
"Privatization of parklands is not the way to reform park management....The
economic difficulties...convinced even the godfather of capitalism that
privatization of parks is a bad idea. Adam Smith wrote, 'Lands for the
purpose of pleasure and magnificence - parks, gardens, public walks, etc.,
possessions which are everywhere considered as causes of expense, not as
sources of revenue - seem to be the only lands which, in a great and civilised
monarchy, ought to belong to the crown.'"
- William R. Lowery, "The Capacity for
Wonder: Preserving National Parks"
"The problem of maintaining the standards of the national park system is ever
present, and while all sites that qualify should be brought in, those that
don't should be left out...The matter of standards is inevitably personal, and
at times geographical. An area that seems superbly qualified for national
park status east of the Mississippi, in a region heavily populated, might seem
less significant in one of the Western states. Congressmen have been known to
recommend areas containing scenery that at best could be described as anemic,
and local boosters constantly push for legislation to establish some minor
curiosities as national parks purely for the financial bonanza of having the
National Park Service designation on the Esso road map...Claims are often made
for historic sites, ranging from the purely insignificant to the hilarious,
most of which are clearly worthy of oblivion...Probably the greatest danger to
the integrity of the national park system is not, however, the occasional
substandard area that somehow slips through. Those that aren't quite good
enough present the gravest problem. If the park system began to include these
areas, which are pleasant and moderately attractive, the distinction between
truly national significance on the one hand and local pride on the other would
be increasingly blurred, and the original idea of national parks would
steadily erode toward mediocrity."
- NPS historian William C. Everhart,
from "The National Park Service", 1972?
"In great deeds something abides. On great fields something stays. Forms
change and pass; bodies disappear; but spirits linger, to consecrate ground
for the vision-place of souls. And reverent men and women from afar, and
generations that know us not and we know not of, heart-drawn to see where and
by whom great things were suffered, and done for them, shall come to this
deathless field, to ponder and dream; and lo! the shadow of the mighty
presence shall wrap them in its bosom, and the power of the vision pass into
their souls."
- General Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain,
Gettysburg, October 3, 1889
"I have always thought of our Service as an institution, more than any other
bureau, engaged in a field essentially of morality - the aim of man to rise
above himself, and to choose the option of quality rather than material
superfluity."
- Freeman Tilden to George B.
Hartzog, Jr., ca. 1971
"An urgent need of the Park Service [in its early years] was to develop a
capable and professional ranger force. At his first national parks conference,
Mather had been disappointed with the caliber of the superintendents, many of
whom were politically appointed lightweights, unmoved by his idealism.
Rangers and superintendents were not under civil service, and predictably the
parks were crippled by vigorous application of the spoils system. When a new
administration took office in Washington, the faces of new superintendents
appeared in the parks, for appointments to many jobs were prerogatives of
local congressmen. A story is told, which has the ring of truth, that one
such ranger appointee in Glacier National Park had to be assigned patrol duty
along the railroad tracks so that he wouldn't get lost in the woods.
Postponing entry into civil service, the Park Service thoroughly cleaned house.
It unloaded misfits and shifted jobs around and was highly successful in
finding good men, many of whom were attracted from other agencies.
Fortunately, from its beginnings, the Park Service has been able to attract a
different type of individual. A group of men from unlikely backgrounds have
somehow been assembled who combine a cultivated disregard for standard
operating procedures with an unorthodox ability to get the job done. For the
special flavor that such men have imparted to the agency, the Park Service has
been grateful - generally."
- William C. Everhart, "The National
Park Service", 1972
"Interpretation is considered to be the most important function of the
National Park Service, at least by those gifted employees who have devoted
their careers to an activity that the Park Service can take credit for
pioneering. It is not education, although it was originally so called, but a
distinctive refinement of - and one is tempted to say improvement on - the
classroom variety of the learning process. Its origination, shortly after the
Park Service was established, supplied an essential ingredient required if
people were to appreciate the meaning of national parks...The word
'interpretation' came gradually to replace the term 'education,' in part no
doubt to avoid any suggestion that the modest appetite for knowledge that the
average visitor carries with him while on vacation would be promptly submerged
in a tide of completely accurate but exquisitely boring facts. But
interpretation also seemed a better term to describe the function of dealing
with subjects that for most people were unfamiliar - geology, biology, botany.
It was almost like learning a new language. The process of translating this
language, the language of the earth, suggested the term 'interpretation'...The
interpreter's task...is to fulfill the charge of Charles Darwin: 'We must see
with the eye of the mind.' Interpretation, concludes Freeman Tilden, is
'mindsight.'"
- William C. Everhart, "The National
Park Service", 1972?
"The ultimate purposes for which parks are managed have spiritual overtones.
To some degree, each of the bountiful elements of the parks - plant or tree or
bird, historic building or artifact, seashell or pot shard - helps a person to
find his place in the universe. The function of a national park might be
considered as contributing insight into those sovereign questions that human
knowledge derived from practical experience finds so difficult to answer: Who
are we, where are we, and why?"
- William C. Everhart, "The National
Park Service", 1972
"The biggest problem has been, and will continue to be, convincing the public
of the need for sound management, protection and preservation. But I believe
in complete openness before the public. If we fail to make Americans aware of
the problems facing the national parks, and to involve them in choosing the
right solutions to these problems, then we are failing in our responsibility
as stewards of these public lands."
- Russ Dickenson, Director, 1980-1985
"The most important reason for preserving historic sites and buildings is not
primarily economic. If they are to be preserved, our people must believe in
the value of continuity in the life of the community, linking past generations
with the present generation and with the generations yet to come. They must
believe that tradition is an essential part of community and national life.
They must believe in the worthwhileness of remembering and preserving the best
of the creative achievements of our ancestors."
- Hillory A. Tolson, Assistant
Director, NPS, 1933-1963
"Establishing a national park, the highest form of land protection in the
United States, does not, in itself, insure that the resources within the park
will be preserved in perpetuity. The fact is that the future of many units of
our national park system is more in the hands of state and local agencies and
political leaders...than (in the hands of) the managers and policy makers that
govern our national parks."
- Robert S. Chandler, former
superintendent, Everglades, 1992
"If we are going to succeed in preserving the greatness of the national parks,
they must be held inviolate. They represent the last stand of primitive
America. If we are going to whittle away at them we should recognize, at the
very beginning, that all such whittlings are cumulative and that the end
result will be mediocrity. Greatness will be gone."
- Newton B. Drury, Director, 1940-1951
"The problem of the (Indiana) Dunes is a symbol of the crisis that faces all
America. It is as though we were standing on the last acre, faced with a
decision as to how it should be used. In actuality, it is the last acre, the
last acre of its kind; in essence it foreshadows the time not too far removed
when we will, in all truth, be standing on the last unused, unprotected acre,
wondering which way to go. Have we the courage to stand up and place physical
limits on the constant relentless march of industrialization?"
- Senator Paul H. Douglas (Illinois),
May 26, 1958 ?
"The battlefields at Petersburg were the scenes of memorable struggles and
heroic sacrifices....Manassas was, in the largest sense, the beginning of the
war; Gettysburg was high tide of hostilities on both sides, but Petersburg was
the final field where the fratricidal struggle was fought to a finish. There,
if anywhere, should be a permanent memorial to a restored peace between the
States. Such a memorial, in the form of a park, would commemorate the highest
ideals and exploits of American valor and strategy, without the taint of
bitterness or shame to either side."
- U.S. House of Representatives, 69th
Congress, Report No. 887, April 15, 1926
"The greatest resource of all is space - space for wandering, space for
solitude and a sense of discovery. For 300 years Americans have benefitted
from such space, with its opportunities to go forth to wilderness adventure.
First beyond the Appalachians, then the Missouri and the Rockies, then to
Alaska. This is the last of it. Combined with neighboring Noatak, big,
beautiful, beckoning wild landscapes stretch no farther under the United
States flag."
- Adapted from John Kauffmann,
excerpted from Bill Brown's "This Last
Treasure"
"Here are no lofty peaks seeking the sky, no mighty glaciers or rushing
streams wearing away the uplifted land. Here is land, tranquil in its quiet
beauty, serving not as the source of water but as the last receiver of it. To
its natural abundance we owe this spectacular plant and animal life that
distinguishes this place from all others in our country."
- President Harry S. Truman, talking
about the Everglades, 1947
"(The National Park Service) probably will never find a sense of mission as
coherent, with such visionary appeal, or as successful a strategic guide as
the one Mather and Albright fashioned for it. The forces of emerging modern
society in the early twentieth century and the notion of progress which
accompanied it had the power and charm to give the era a uniquely coherent
vision of the good life, and it was on this vision that the agency's original
sense of mission was founded. We are not likely to see such a coherent and
persuasive vision again, but this need not condemn the Park Service to relic
status as an agency which has outlived its usefulness. Exactly the contrary
is the case. A creative Park Service with equal dedication to experimentation
in meeting new social demands, to a tough pragmatism in evaluating these
experiments, and to protecting the integrity of the System entrusted to its
care would remain an important part of the federal government and would ensure
that the national parks remain an important part of American life."
- Ronald Foresta, "America's National
Parks and Their Keepers", 1984
"Thousands of tired, nerve-shaken, overcivilized people are beginning to find
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."
- John Muir, "Our National Parks"?
"Preservation of the future may be the most important instinct in the fabric
of life on earth. It is certainly the most beautiful. Somehow we must
nurture the diminishing instinct to protect the generations to come, bringing
it to the conference rooms of power and politics and industry. For if we
thoughtlessly barter away the lives and futures of our children and
grandchildren for more convenience, we will have made the most shameful
bargain in the history of man."
- Jacques Cousteau, 1977
"In this letter, perhaps one of my last official statements to you, let me
urge you to be aggressive and vigorous in the fulfillment of your
administrative duties. The National Park Service, from its beginning, has
been an outstanding organization because its leaders, both in Washington and
out in the field, worked increasingly and with high public spirit to carry out
the noble policies and maintain the lofty ideals of the service as expressed
in law and executive pronouncement. Do not let the service become 'just
another Government bureau;' keep it youthful, vigorous, clean and strong. We
are not here to simply protect what we have been given so far; we are here to
try to be the future guardians of those areas as well as to sweep our
protective arms around the vast lands which may well need us as man and his
industrial world expand and encroach on the last bastions of wilderness.
"I hope that particular attention will be accorded always to that mandate in
the National Park Service Act of 1916 and in many organic acts of the
individual parks which enjoin us to keep our great parks in their natural
condition. Oppose with all your strength and power all proposals to penetrate
your wilderness regions with motorways and other symbols of modern
mechanization. Keep large sections of primitive country free from the
influence of destructive civilization. Keep these bits of primitive America
for those who seek peace and rest in the silent places; keep them for the
hardy climbers of the crags and peaks; keep them for the horseman and the pack
train; keep them for the scientist and student of nature; keep them for all
who would use their minds and hearts to know what God had created. Remember,
once opened, they can never be wholly restored to primeval charm and grandeur.
"I also urge you to be ever on the alert to detect and defeat attempts to
exploit commercially the resources of the national parks. Often projects will
be formulated and come to you 'sugar-coated' with an alluring argument that
the park will be benefitted by its adoption. We National Park men and women
know that nature's work as expressed in the world-famous regions in our charge
cannot be improved upon by man.
"Beware, too, of innovation in making the parks accessible. For a half
century, elevators, cableways, electric railways and similar contrivances have
been proposed from time to time and have been uniformly rejected. The
airplane, while now an accepted means of transportation, should not be
permitted to land in our primitive areas.
"Park usefulness and popularity should not be measured in terms of mere
numbers of visitors. Some precious park areas can easily be destroyed by the
concentration of too many visitors. We should be interested in the quality of
park patronage, not by the quantity. The parks, while theoretically for
everyone to use and enjoy, should be so managed what only those numbers of
visitors that can enjoy them while at the same time not overuse and harm them
would be admitted at a given time. We must keep elements of our crowded
civilization to a minimum in our parks. Certain comforts, such as safe roads,
sanitary facilities, water, food and modest lodging, should be available.
Also extra care must be taken for the children, the elderly and the
incapacitated to enjoy the beauty of the parks.?
"We have been compared to the military forces because of our dedication and
esprit de corps. In a sense this is true. We do act as guardians of our
country's land. Our National Park Service uniform which we wear with pride
does command the respect of our fellow citizens. We have the spirit of
fighters, not as a destructive force, but as a power for good. With this
spirit, each of us is an integral part of the preservation of the magnificent
heritage we have been given, so that centuries from now people of our world,
or perhaps of other worlds, may see and understand what is unique to our earth,
never changing, eternal."
- Farewell message to the Service,
Horace M. Albright, 1933
"The external threats issue is a problem of competing values. The parks have
so many different meanings and, consequently, values for so many different
people, and we as a nation have valued our public lands for so many different
things, that it is difficult to imagine the formation of a single coalition to
protect the parks. Yet that is the goal. If we can come together in our love
for the parks, then the external threats issue might be resolved."
- John C. Freemuth, "Islands Under
Seige: National Parks and the Politics of
External Threats"
"Ability to see the cultural value of wilderness boils down, in the last
analysis, to a question of intellectual humility. The shallow-minded modern
who has lost his rootage in the land assumes that he has already discovered
what is important; it is such who prate of empires, political or economic,
that will last a thousand years. It is only the scholar who appreciates that
all history consists of successive excursions from a single starting-point, to
which man returns again and again to organize yet another search for a durable
scale of values. It is only the scholar who understands why raw wilderness
give definition and meaning to the human enterprise."
- Aldo Leopold, "A Sand County
Almanac"
"The national parks represent our belief that certain lands are more valuable
to us in their preserved state. We have always acknowledged, though, that
activities not allowed in the parks were more than allowable and even
encouraged elsewhere. Only recently have we seen that these same activities
may threaten the parks we thought were preserved for all time."
- John C. Freemuth, "Islands Under
Siege: National Parks and the Politics of
External Threats"
"I think we all agree that a national park is not merely scenery. A national
park embodies something that cannot be found everywhere - it embodies history,
a way of life, primitive experience, early environment. It has the elements
capable of providing that lifting of the spirit for which modern civilization
is willing to pay so much. A national park is specifically dedicated to these
intangible and imponderable qualities."
- Conservationist Olaus J. Murie,
1889-1963
"It would be folly to set aside such large quantities of land and water for
recreation that the ability of the people of the country to make a decent
livelihood would be curtailed; it would similarly be folly to develop our
resouces for economic use beyond genuine need and to the detriment of our
opportunities to enjoy our fair share of mental and spiritual satisfaction -
those experiences which lift us above the beasts of the field."
- Newton B. Drury, Director, 1940-1951?
"If the time ever comes when we cannot sit down and commune with our soul and
our God among the beauties of such places as our national parks, we are going
to be in a pretty bad way. We are materialistic enough as it is - whether by
necessity or choice."
- J.W. Rupley, Bureau of the Budget
"RESOLVED, That the American Association for the Advancement of Science
recognizes the National Parks as the means of preserving unique
representations of the primitive and majestic in nature, and wishes to record
its protests against additions to the National Park System, or change in
policy, which may tend to lessen in fact or in public estimation their present
high value as natural museums, their complete conservation from industrial
uses, and their effectiveness as a national education institution."
- Resolution, AAAS, December, 1925
"We have a big stake in what you see around you here at Yellowstone. It's a
part of what I call our common ground. And we should not do anything this
year - anything - to weaken our ability to protect the quality of our land,
our water, our food, the diversity of our wildlife and the sanctity of our
natural treasures. We can balance the budget without doing any of that, and
that's the commitment all of us ought to make today on this anniversary of the
National Park Service."
- President William Clinton, August 26, 1995
"There's an old Native American saying that goes: In all our deliberations we
must take into account the well-being of the seventh generation to follow.
The wisdom of those words has come alive to me during my family's Wyoming
vacation...I'm more grateful than ever that those who came before us saw fit
to preserve this land for the enjoyment of future generations of Americans.
That was the intent of Congress when it established the National Park Service
79 years ago today. I can think of few things that mean more to the national
life of our country than our national parks...
"[If] we want to maintain our national heritage for our children and our
grandchildren, we have to do more than preserve our national parks; we've got
to preserve our environment...For a long time now, the American people have
stood together on common ground to preserve our environment. At the beginning
of this century, Theodore Roosevelt, a Republican, began a fervent call for
conservation. In 1905, he said, 'There can be nothing in the world more
beautiful than a Yosemite, the groves of giant Sequoias and Redwoods, the
Canyon of the Colorado, the Canyon of Yellowstone, its three Tetons. And our
people should see to it that they are preserved for their children and their
children's children forever.'
"Well, I second that emotion. And after spending the last week in Wyoming, I
have an even deeper commitment to fulfilling it. So let's end this century by
meeting the challenge Teddy Roosevelt set for us at the beginning. We've made
a lot of progress in the protection of our environment and our national
heritage. But the future can be even brighter.
"Do we need reforms? Yes. Should we reverse course? Not on your life. It's
up to us."
- President William Clinton, August 26, 1995?
"I recognize the fact that National Park Service programs stand out among the
activities directed toward the attainment of citizen appreciation of our
national heritage, and I agree that the national parks occupany an
advantageous position in our social scheme, a position which makes them
especially available as an aid in developing a national perspective in native
values and democratic ways."
- Harold L. Ickes, Secretary of
Interior, 1933-1946
"The founders of the national park system acted wisely when they had the first
national park 'set apart.' Not set apart to be uselessly hoarded as a miser
hoards his idle gold, but set apart for definite, prescribed uses; to work for
the nation's welfare, just as properly invested capital works and accrues
benefits for the investor."
- Arno B. Cammerer, Director, 1933-1940
"One of the great ironies of the American park system is that it was assembled
without benefit of a blueprint. What we enjoy today has been stitched
together over more than a century like a giant quilt - park by park - by the
loving hands of thousands of people who wanted to save something precious for
their children and grandchildren."
- Stewart L. Udall, in Dwight Rettie's
"Our National Park System: Caring for
America's Greatest Natural and Historic
Treasures"
"It is no longer a question of whether this great United States can afford to
dedicate a portion of its land to such (NPS) purposes, but rather one of
whether or not the eighty-five hundredths of one per cent of the land area of
the United States contained within the National Park System, together with the
areas under other Federal and state agencies, are adequate to protect that
portion of the Nation's heritage which should logically be devoted to parks
and recreation."
- Newton B. Drury, Director, 1940-1951
"The term 'National Park' ought to be like the word 'sterling' is to silver.
It ought to indicate outstanding merit."
- Congressman Louis C. Cramton
"We should be as prophetic in foreseeing park needs and as generous in
satisfying them as we can, for the longer the waiting, the more difficult and
costly the task will be."
- Harold A. Caparn
"The national parks are charged with the obligation of preserving superlative
natural regions, including wilderness areas, for the benefit of posterity.
Attentiveness to the pleasure and comfort of the people is essential, but it
cannot mean catering to absolutely unlimited numbers unless the second
function is to destroy the first. In a theater, when the seats in the house
have been sold out and the available standing room also has been pre-empted,
the management does not jeopardize the main event by allowing still more
onlookers to crowd upon the stage and impede the unfolding of the drama."
- C. F. Brockman?
"I would like to think that all park men, whatever segment of the field may be
their particular concern, might see that this continuing battle against
debasing the finest of our scenic and scientific and historic possessions is
their battle, too...park folk are people of standing in their communities, in
the States and in the Nation; they can wield a powerful influence in behalf of
the people of today and of generations still far in the future."
- Conrad L. Wirth, Director, 1952-1964
"For a nation that grows more metropolitan and industrialized every year, the
experience of solitude, even the simple fact of quiet, has become
inestimable...It is imperative to maintain portions of the wilderness
untouched, so that a tree will rot where it falls, a waterfall will pour its
curve without generating electricity, a trumpeter swan may float on
uncontaminated water - and moderns may at least see what their ancestors knew
in their nerves and blood."
- Historian Bernard DeVoto
"Our concern is not to see that each and every part of the country has a
National Park System installation. It is to see that all areas of national
significance which are worthy of preservation of their scenery, their
historical associations, their recreational opportunities, or their scientific
interest are preserved."
- Wayne Aspinall, former chairman,
House Interior and Insular Affairs
Committee
"In no other way is the upward trend of our modern civilization so well
exemplified as in the establishment, development, and increasing use of our
National Park and Monument System .... Where once the best scenery, as well as
in everything else, was reserved for the use of those most favored, and for
the pleasure of kings and princes, today every American citizen or visitor to
our shores may enjoy the most priceless offerings of nature. Democracy is
believed to be still in the experimental stage, but surely any system that
institutes and makes successful such a magnificent experiment cannot fail of
its ultimate
purpose."
- Ray Lyman Wilbur, Secretary of the
Interior, 1929 - 1933
"Growth and development of national park and reserve programs throughout the
world are important to the welfare of the people of every nation. We must
have places where we can find release from the tensions of an increasingly
industrialized civilization, where we can have personal contact with the
natural environment which sustains us. To this end, permanent preservation of
the outstanding scenic and scientific assets, of every country, and of the
magnificent and varied wildlife which can be so easily endangered by human
activity, is imperative. National parks and reserves are an integral aspect
of intelligent use of natural resources. It is the course of wisdom to set
aside an ample portion of our national resources as national and reserves,
thus ensuring that future generations may know the majesty of the earth as we
know it today."
- John Fitzgerald Kennedy, First World
Conference on National Parks, 1962
"In Nature's ennobling and boundless scenes, the hateful boundary lines and
the forts and flags and prejudices of nations are forgotten. Nature is
universal. The supreme triumph of parks is humanity....Sometime it may be
that an immortal pine will be the flag of a united and peaceful world."
- Enos Mills, "Your National Parks",
1916?
"National parks are not playgrounds, nor theme parks, but sanctuaries, meant
to be forever; they are priceless time capsules for tomorrow that we are
privileged to know and enjoy today. By that I mean a national park is ideally
suited to exercise the body in a test with nature, stimulate the mind with new
learning, and challenge the spirit, the spirit of the individual to connect
with something larger than himself or herself, and more lasting than all the
mechanization of life and work at home."
- Dr. Michael Frome, from presentation
given at Northwest Wilderness and Parks
Conference
"It cannot be escaped that environmental management to perpetuate the Nation's
park and recreation lands provides the action crucible for public involvement
in the larger across-the-land environmental reform movement...Only if the
public sees the Nation's park and recreation lands as the first line of
defense against general environmental decay, gets involved at the action level
to save them, and begins to see the local, regional, and national implications
in such saving - only then will environmental communications begin to mean
something. The statement that park and recreation lands are the first line of
defense against general environmental decay deserves analysis: It is because
environmental quality is so finely balanced that quality environments are so
vulnerable. It is just because the struggle for life in degraded urban
environments is so hard that park and recreation areas tend toward
expendability."
- William E. Brown, "Islands of Hope:
Parks and Recreation in Environmental
Crisis," 1971
"The national parks ... should be looked upon as open books of nature,
repositories of knowledge, on which every plant, herb, tree, animal, bird,
insect and reptile forms a page. Life histories, habits and behavior of
animals and birds should be completed in these parks, and not solely within
the four walls of schools and colleges."
- M. A. Badshah, wildlife officer,
India, First World Conference on National
Parks, 1962
"Although the major burdens of historic preservation have been borne and major
efforts initiated by private agencies and individuals, and both should
continue to play a vital role, it is nevertheless necessary and appropriate
for the Federal Government to acccelerate its historic preservation programs
and actities, to give maximum encouragement to agencies and individuals
undertaking preservation by private means, and to assist State and local
governments and the National Trust for Historic Preservation in the United
States to expand and accelerate their historic preservation programs and
activities."
- Preamble, National Historic
Preservation Act of 1966
"Perhaps second only to liberty itself, the national park idea is the finest
contribution of the United States to world culture. These parklands are more
than physical resources. They are the delicate strands of nature and culture
that bond generation to generation. They are, moreover, the benchmarks of our
heritage by which we may chart a new course of human and corporate behavior in
our nation so essential to the restoration of quality in our daily lives and
of a sense of community in our society."
- Director George Hartzog, "Battling
for the National Parks", 1988?
"Parks are an attribute of sovereignty and, of course, were known for hundreds
of years prior to the establishment of America's first national park. Always
those parks belonged to the sovereign - the king, the queen, (or) the
emperor...In the United States, the people are the sovereign. America's
national parks are the special creations of the people through their elected
representatives in the Congress...A myth endures that the park service alone
preserves the national parks. That is its aspiration, but not the reality.
If one reads the journals of the citizen conservation organizations, one may
conclude that they preserve the parks. That is their objective, but not the
reality. There are even some romanticists who suggest that the park service
and the citizen conservation organizations, together, preserve the parks.
That, certainly, is their endeavor, but not the reality. The reality is that
the people through their elected representatives in the Congress preserve the
parks - or destroy them."
- Director George Hartzog, "Battling
for the National Parks", 1988
"Years ago, coal miners carried canaries with them into the mines to detect
lethal gases. Today, our national parks are our ecological canaries."
- Director George Hartzog, "Battling
for the National Parks", 1988
"The pressures of a growing population, self-interest, and shortness of vision
are now the greatest enemies of the national park idea."
- Photographer Ansel Adams, cited in
George Hartzog, "Battling for the National
Parks", 1988
"It is hard to imagine more dedicated people than those who run the parks. I
have never met a single one whom I would not be glad to meet again, and I have
invariable regretted the time to say goodbye. The range of their interests,
their high intelligence, their devotion, make them a separate and wonderful
breed."
- Publisher Alfred Knopf, chairman,
Secretary's Advisory Board on National
Parks
"The old mystique is nearly dormant...The energy and idealism that have
characterized the park service for so long have not vanished, but they do seem
to be the victims of a slight recession."
- NPS historian William C. Everhart
"The National Park Service is operated with three levels of management: the
director's office in Washington, which is responsible for translating the
secretary's objectives into action; regional offices [sic]...are responsible
for coordination of field management; and the parks, each in the charge of a
superintendent, responsible for on-site accomplishment of the service mission,
namely: preserve the park resources and serve the visitor. The operation is
not nearly as smooth as the outlines of the organization chart. Park people
are intensely committed to their mission, hard working, strong-willed and
fiercely independent. Dr. Stanley Cain, a former assistant secretary and a
former chairman of the secretary's Advisory Board on National Parks, once
likened the director's job to that of a university president. 'They each,' he
said, 'have a job that requires the skill to herd wild hogs on ice.'"
- Director George Hartzog, "Battling
for the National Parks", 1988?
"In the Rio Grande Valley, (an) elder from Zuni pueblo listened to a Bureau of
Land Management official describe the agency's latest fiscal budget and how it
would affect public land policy in the West. 'Any questions?' he asked. The
elder raised his hand and said, 'Sir I'd like to know what your short-term
fiscal plans are - for the next 500 years.'
- Terry Tempest Williams, "Utne
Reader", July-August 1995
"The preservation of historic sites for the public benefit, together with
their proper interpretation, tends to enhance the respect and love of the
citizen for the institutions of his country, as well as strengthen his
resolution to defend unselfishly the hallowed traditions and high ideals of
America."
- President Franklin D. Roosevelt,
writing in support of historic sites
legislation, 1935
"The long fight to save wild beauty represents democracy at its best. It
requires citizens to practice the hardest of all virtues - self-restraint."
- Edwin Way Teale, American naturalist,
author and photographer
"The hotly contested question of vehicle use in the parks...is not an issue of
transportation, but of pace. Intensity of concentration on the natural scene
and attentiveness to detail are simply less likely to occur at forty miles an
hour. For this reason it is appropriate to discourage motorized travel. Such
a policy would not militate against all road building in reserved parklands.
We need reasonable access to the various areas of very large parks. And
because reserved lands should affirmatively be made enticing to as wide a
spectrum of the public as possible, including newcomers who need a taste of
the opportunities the land offers, it makes sense to have - as we do in many
parks - a highway designed to provide an introduction for those who are
deciding whether they want to come back for more. The purpose of reserving
natural areas, however, is not to keep people in their cars, but to lure them
out; to encourage a close look at the infinite detail and variety that the
natural scene provides; to expose, rather than to insulate..."
- Joseph L. Sax, "Mountains Without
Handrails", 1980
"You are certainly right when you say 'us natives' can do what you like with
your scenery. But the National Parks and Monuments happen not to be your
scenery. They are our scenery. They do not belong to Colorado or the West,
they belong to the people of the United States, including the miserable
unfortunates who have to live east of the Allegheny hillocks. And, podner, as
one Westerner to another, let me give you one small piece of advice before you
start shooting again. Don't shoot those unfortunates too loudly or too
obnoxiously. You might make them so mad that they would stop paying for your
water developments."
- Historian Bernard DeVoto, from a
1950 letter objecting to an editorial
advocating that Coloradans were the
appropriate people to determine whether or
not bo build dams inside Dinosaur National
Monument
"The more you come to know the national parks, the more the hidden assets
begin to appear. You never come to the end of them. They are seldom the
things the eye first sees; they are nearly never the things avowedly sought."
- Freeman Tilden?
"The hour is late, the opportunities diminish with each passing year, and we
must establish here a Common Market of conservation knowledge which will
enable us to achieve our highest goals and broadest purposes. With each day
that passes, the natural world shrinks as we exert greater artificial control
over our environment."
- Stewart L. Udall, Secretary of the
Interior
"...when a society or a civilization perishes, one condition may always be
found. They forgot where they came from. They lost sight of what brought
them along. The hard beginnings were forgotten and the struggles farther
along. They became satisfied with themselves. Unity and common understanding
there had been, enough to overcome rot and dissolution, enough to break
through their obstacles. But the mockers came. And the deniers were heard.
And vision and hope faded. And the custom of greeting became 'What's the
use?' And men whose forefathers would go anywhere, holding nothing impossible
in the genius of man, joined the mockers and deniers. They forgot where they
came from. They lost sight of what brought them along."
- Poet Carl Sandburg
"If future generations are to remember us with gratitude rather than contempt,
we must leave them more than the miracles of technology. We must leave them a
glimpse of the world as it was in the beginning, not just after we got through
with it."
- President Lyndon B. Johnson, upon
the signing of the Wilderness Act, 1964
"As one reflects on the dimensions of the park system today, it is useful to
remember that the concept of a system of places and structures to embrace the
national patrimony is a relatively new idea. In the beginning the primary
object was to set aside the greatest of the majestic 'wonders' of the nation.
Today that concept embraces a wide spectrum of resources - natural, historical,
and recreational - that taken together share a remarkable similarity to the
geographic and ethnic pluralism of our culture. It is hard to imagine how
even a conscious plan could have achieved so much so well."
- Director Russell Dickenson, from the
forward to "The National Park Service,"
1983
"Yet despite these problems, I became aware of a rare attitude in the visitors.
These were their parks, a part of their heritage, and they felt fiercely
protective of them. I found that to harm or threaten a national park is to
touch a sensitive nerve in the American public. Many visitors as well as park
employees seemed to live by a set of values rarely seen elsewhere, and that
they themselves might not live by outside the park. They appreciated the
natural beauty around them - the land, the plants, the birds, the animals.
And what's more, they showed a regard for other peoples chance to share the
park experience. They seemed to feel they were part of a whole natural system,
and most of them behaved as if they did not want to leave that system any
worse than they found it, so that others and even future generations could
enjoy and share it."
- Robert Cahn, "National Parks in
Crisis", 1980?
"(C)laimed conflicts are often less intractable than they appear at first
view...by forcing alternatives explicitly into the open, and by pursuing the
facts behind the claims, we can often resolve concrete cases without having to
weigh competing values in the abstract. The tension between service of
conventional recreation and the preservation of national parks will never
wholly disappear, but the problem is not aided by posing questions such as:
How many acres of wilderness are enough? Like the question of how many books
a library should have, or how many Brahms symphonies are sufficient, these are
empty canards. If the public accedes to the preservationist position, the
task will be to hold on to as much national parkland as other irresistible
public demands will tolerate. In dealing with conflict, one must always have
a starting point. If the goal is to encourage contemplative recreation in the
parks, the way to do it is diligently to look for ways to meet other
recreational demands more effectively at existing sites, and to scrutinize
more carefully claims of need and demand. The strategy is to increase the
burden of proof that there is no alternative except the use of parklands..."
- Joseph Sax, "National Parks in
Crisis", 1980
"Public appreciation and support are the salvation of protected areas.
Interpretation is potentially the foremost tool for engendering a loyal
advocacy...In its vision statement, the (NPS) has stressed the absolute
necessity for reinvigorating its educational and interpretive program efforts.
This strategy obviously is aimed at broadening the base of public support for
parks and open space. Park and protected areas staff must acknowledge the
need for interpretive involvement in the important task of helping parks to
survive. It is critical that interpreters become the activists of the park
movement, not merely its academic observers. Interpretation cannot continue
to be a passenger. It must become a driver."
- James Thompson and James Mack, "The
George Wright Forum", Volume 12, Number 2,
1995
"National parks constitute a gallery of American treasures. They are more
than destinations; they are a way of travel. In an era of growing population
and shrinking space, they become ever more valuable. The future of the
national parks, however, depends on awareness, concern, and sense of custody
of the public they serve. In a democracy, we get what we deserve and leave a
legacy that reflects ourselves and our time."
- Michael Frome, "National Parks in
Crisis", 1981
"The American experience has been the confrontation by old peoples and
cultures of a world as new as if it has just risen from the sea. That gave us
our hope and our excitement, and the hope and excitement can be passed on to
newer Americans, Americans who never saw any phase of the frontier, but only
so long as we keep the remainder of our wild as a reserve and a promise - a
sort of wilderness bank...We simply need that wild country available to us,
even if we never do more than drive to its edge and look in. For it can be a
means of reassuring ourselves of our sanity as creatures, a part of the
geography of hope."
- Wallace Stegner, from a 1960 letter
to the Outdoor Recreation Resources Review
Commission?
"The national park idea represents a far-reaching cultural achievement, for
here we raise our thoughts above the average, and enter a sphere in which the
intangible values of the human heart and spirit take precedent. Freedom
prevails. The foxes are free to dig burrows where they will; to hunt
ptarmigan, ground squirrels and mice as the spirit moves. The grizzlies
wander over their ancestral home unmolested; dig roots and ground squirrels,
graze grass, and harvest berries according to whatever menu appeals to them.
The 'bad' wolf seeks an honest living as of yore. He is a respected citizen,
morally on par with everyone else. Our task is to perpetuate this freedom and
purity of nature, this ebb and flow of life."
- Conservationist Adolph Murie
"I say to you that unless we keep the stream of the past with living
significance for the present, we not only have no past, we have no present.
Tradition is not a barren pride in a dead glory; tradition is something that
provides refreshment for the spirit. It is something that gives us deep
assurance and a sense of destiny and a determination to hold on fast to the
great things that have been done through valor and imagination by those who
have gone before us."
- Justice Felix Frankfurter
"Parks are first-aid - also prevention. They prevent more law-breaking than
policemen; cure more than physicians, give more ideas than sermons; more
development than schools. The pace and pressure of modern life, its daily
duties and examinations, require that everyone must be steadily refreshed, and
for this sustaining and ever-invoking refreshment nature is a perennial,
cheering source. Nature takes mind and body and puts them at their best.
Here one comes to know himself and to be the self he would like to be. Nature
is the lifesaver of the race; the great out-of-doors is the lifesaving station
of the nation. Probably the best way to delay death, the best medicine to
lengthen life, is to take to the woods. This life-sustaining prescription is
most effective as a preventive and should be regularly used. Like a sermon,
it should be taken once in a while whether needed or not. It is Mother
Nature's cure-all, and there are no substitutes just as good..."
- Enos Mills, "father" of Rocky
Mountain NP, ca. 1920
"There are certain values in our landscape that ought to be sustained against
destruction or impairment, though their worth cannot be expressed in money
terms. They are essential to our 'life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness;'
this nation of ours is not so rich it can afford to lose them; it is still
rich enough to afford to preserve them."
- Newton B. Drury, Director, 1940-1951
"The money we spend for effective conservation work is a sound investment in
better living for ourselves and our children. We will not be dismayed by
those who say the cost of such investments is too great. The cost of not
making them would be far greater."
- President Harry S Truman
"The kings of England formerly had their forests 'to hold the king's game,'
for sport or food, sometimes destroying villages to create or extend them; and
I think that they were impelled by a true instinct. Why should not we, who
have renounced the king's authority, have our national preserves, where no
villages need be destroyed, in which the bear and panther, and some even of
the hunter race, may still exits, and not be 'civilized off the face of the
earth' - our forests, not to hold the king's game merely...but for inspiration
and our own true recreation? Or shall we, like the villains, grub them all up,
poaching on our own national domain?"
- Henry David Thoreau, from "Maine Woods"?
"In a thousand unseen ways we have drawn shape and strength from the
land....The house of America is founded upon our land and if we keep that
whole, then the storm can rage, but the house will stand forever."
- President Lyndon Baines Johnson
"Lands, for the purpose of pleasure and magnificence, parks, gardens, public
walks, which are everywhere considered as causes of expense, not as sources of
revenue, seem to be the only lands which, in a great and civilized monarchy,
ought to belong to the crown...Public stock and public lands, therefore, the
two sources of revenue which may peculiarly belong to the sovereign or
commonwealth, being both improper and insufficient funds for defraying the
necessary expense, must, the greater part of it, be defrayed by taxes of one
kind or another; the people contributing a part of their own private revenue
in order to make up a public revenue to the sovereign or commonwealth."
- Economist Adam Smith, "The
Wealth of Nations", Book 5, Chapter
2, 1776
"Outdoor recreation is not found in the forests or glaciers or historic sites
[of the National Park Service], but in one's reactions to these resources.
The mountain men who came up the Missouri to the Great Shining Mountains
preferred the wilds to the safety and sobriety of the settlements, and they
were not unmoved by the beauty of the land. But of the incredible complexity
of the plant and animal communities that made up wilderness America, they were
as unaware as the prospectors, cattlemen, and sodbusters who followed. The
engendering of a perceptive understanding of these values is perhaps the most
important function of the national parks. Because outdoor recreation has
always involved physical activity, invading or even appropriating for personal
use a section of the countryside, there has developed among some a philosophy
that wilderness that is not personally experienced has little value. In the
case of park wilderness, this philosophy is translated, 'Use it or lose it.'
The capacity for perception may well separate those who see blank spaces on
the map as a profitless waste from those who see it as the most valuable
part."
- NPS historian William C. Everhart,
from "The National Park Service", 1972
"It is absolutely essential that man should manage to preserve something other
than what helps to make soles for his shoes or sewing machines, that he should
leave a margin, a sanctuary, where some of life's beauty can take refuge and
where he himself can feel safe from his own cleverness and folly."
- African game warden in novelist
Romain Gary's "The Roots of Heaven"
"If we are to sustain a healthy balance of life in this country, we must
preserve our natural resources, allowing animal and bird life as much right to
exist as we do human life. To many this must seem like sentimentality. To
those who have taken the effort to find out, it is clearly a matter of life
and death for all of us. This is true not only biologically, but
psychologically as well. Man needs enormous areas, unscarred by his own kind,
as a primary source of spiritual recharging, and this need is as great as his
requirement for material sustenance."
- Nathaniel Alexander Owings, "The
American Aesthetic," 1969?
"I want to say a special word for those who work for the federal government.
Today the Federal work force is 200,000 employees smaller than the day I took
office. The Federal government is the smallest it has been in 30 years, and
getting smaller every day. Most of you probably didn't know that, and there's
good reason. The remaining Federal work force is composed of Americans who
are working harder and working smarter to make sure that the quality of our
services does not decline.
"Take Richard Dean. He worked for Social Security for 22 years. Last year,
he was hard at work in the Federal building in Oklahoma City when the
terrorist blast killed 169 people and brought the rubble around him. He re-
entered the building four times and saved the lives of three women...
"But his story doesn't end there. In November, he was forced out of his
office when the government shut down. The second time the government shut
down, he continued helping Social Security recipients, working without pay.
"On behalf of Richard and his family, I challenge all of you in this chamber:
Never - ever - shut the Federal Government down again."
- President Bill Clinton, "State of
the Union" address, 1996
"The national parks of America include areas of the noblest and most
diversified scenic sublimity easily accessible to the world; nevertheless, it
is their chiefest glory that they are among the completest expressions of
earth's history. The American people is waking rapidly to the magnitude of
its scenic possession; it has yet to learn to appreciate it."
- Robert Sterling Yard, "The Book of
the National Parks," 1919
"My admiration for what you are all doing in the face of such opposition is
enormous. I am eager, always, to make that sense of admiration clear to
others, and look forward to a time when I can stand up and say so in a public
forum. Until then, I wish you every strength, and a big change of wind in
your sails."
- Author Barry Lopez, note to NPS
employees, 1996
"One of the things Westerners should ponder, but generally do not, is their
relation to and attitude toward the federal presence. The bureaus
administering all the empty space that gives Westerners much of their outdoor
pleasure and many of their special privileges and a lot of their pride and
self-image are frequently resented, resisted, or manipulated by those who
benefit economically from them but would like to benefit more, and are
generally taken for granted by the general public.
"The federal presence should be recognized as what it at least partly is: a
reaction against our former profligacy and wastefulness, an effort at
adaptation and stewardship in the interest of the environment and the
future....the land-managing bureaus all have at least part of their purpose
the preservation of the West in a relatively natural, healthy, and sustainable
condition...
"[T]he land bureaus have a strong, often disregarded, influence on how life is
lived in the West. They provide and protect the visible, available, unfenced
space that surrounds almost all western cities and towns--surrounds them as
water surrounds fish, and is their living element.
"The bureaus need, and some would welcome, the kind of public attention that
would force them to behave in the long-range interest. Though I have been
involved in controversies with some of them, the last thing I would want to
see is their dissolution and a return to the policy of disposal, for that
would be the end of the West as I have known and loved it. ?
"Neither state ownership nor private ownership--which state ownership would
soon become--could offer anywhere near the usually disinterested stewardship
that these imperfect and embattled agencies do, while at the same time making
western space available for millions. They have been the strongest impediment
to the careless ruin of what remains of the Public Domain, and they will be
necessary as far ahead as I, at least, can see."
- Wallace Stegner, "Where the Bluebird
Sings to the Lemonade Springs", 1992
"Visits to national park areas have multiplied threefold in less than a
generation. Far more of us than ever before walk in wilderness now and time-
travel in history simultaneously. As we enjoy and save our parks, building
their defenses in our hearts, the parks help save us. Interconnections form
in our depths. The pattern of the whole grows stronger. We hear again the
great orchestra of earth and life, and our spirits begin again to sing,
tentatively yet, but more and more in harmony."
- Darwin Lambert, cited in "National
Parks in Crisis," 1982
"I am convinced that Americans have literally lost the ability to think about
their surroundings, and for a specific reason. Historically, Americans have
not had a high regard for the public realms, and this is a very unfortunate
thing, because the public realm is the physical manifestation of the public
good. When you degrade the public realms, as we have, you degrade the common
good, and hence you impair the ability of a group of people incorporated as a
republic to think about the public interest."
- James Howard Kunstler, "Planning
Commissioners Journal", Winter, 1995
"In the national parks, there is no harvesting of timber. There is at present
no hunting of wild animals. There is no mining of minerals. There is, or
should be, no grazing of domestic animals. There are no shows, or what are
commonly known as 'amusements.' There is not attempt to make profits. The
parks are operated on funds appropriated by Congress, and the receipts from
visitors go into the miscellaneous receipts of the Federal Treasury, so that
the balancing of income and outgo, common to business enterprise, does not
exist. This scheme of land use, so far removed from the average person's
economic experience, may glancingly seem strange and remote. And so it is.
It is a new theory in the world, of management of the public land for a
superior kind of pleasure and profit; for the perpetuation of the country's
natural and historic heritage, untarnished by invasion and depletion other
than that of invincible time. No wonder, then, that it is a difficult story
to tell."
- Freeman Tilden, "The National
Parks," 1951
"Medals weren't that big a deal to most [Army] Rangers [in Vietnam]...Mutual
respect was a far more valued commodity. But there was one little bauble (as
Napoleon so aptly labeled military medals) that made its way into Ranger
folklore....It was a little Smoky Bear pin issued by the National Park Service
in the 1960s. They were passed among Rangers as signs of respect. As
medallions of honor. And they became more prized as measures of duty and
selflessness than anything the Pentagon could throw our way. I still have
mine. It's my most treasured possession from the Vietnam War. And to this
day, I can't look at someone in a National Park Service uniform and separate
them from ideals of patriotism and duty to their country. And that's the way
it ought to be."
- Letter to Director Roger Kennedy
from anonymous Vietnam veteran, 1996?
"Recently I read an account of a Los Angeles 'Eco-Expo' last April, where
children were invited to write down their answers to the basic question: 'Why
save endangered species?' One child, Gabriel, answered, 'Because God gave us
the animals.' Travis and Gina wrote, 'Because we love them.' A third
answered, 'Because we'll be lonely without them.' Still another wrote,
'Because they're a part of our life. If we didn't have them, it would not be a
complete world. The Lord put them on earth to be enjoyed, not destroyed.'
"Now, in my lifetime I have heard many, many political, agricultural,
scientific, medical and ecological reasons for saving endangered species. I
have in fact hired biologists and ecologists for just that purpose. All their
reasons have to do with providing humans with potential cures for disease, or
yielding humans new strains of drought-resistant crops, or offering humans
bioremediation of oil spills, or thousands of other justifications of why
species are useful to humans. But none of their reasons moved me like the
children's....
"Whenever I confront some of [the] bills that systematically eviscerate the
Endangered Species Act, I take refuge and inspiration from the simple written
answers of those children at the Los Angeles expo. But I sometimes wonder if
children are the only ones who express religious values when talking about
endangered species. I wonder if anyone else in America is trying to restore
an ounce of humility to mankind, reminding our political leaders that the
earth is a sacred precinct, designed by and for the purposes of the creator.
"I got my answer last month. I read letter after letter from five different
religious orders, representing tens of millions of churchgoers, all opposing a
House bill to weaken the Endangered Species Act. They opposed it not for
technical or scientific or agricultural or medicinal reasons, but for
spiritual reasons. And I was moved not only by how such diverse faiths could
reach so pure an agreement against this bill, but by the common language and
terms with which they opposed it, language that echoed the voices of the
children...
"I conclude here tonight by affirming that those religious values remain at
the heart of the Endangered Species Act, that they make themselves manifest
through the green eyes of the grey wolf, through the call of the whooping
crane, through the splash of the Pacific salmon, through the voices of
America's children. We are living between the flood and the rainbow: between
the threats to creation on the one side and God's covenant to protect life on
the other."
"Why should we save endangered species? Let us answer this question with one
voice, the voice of the child at that expo, who scrawled her answer at the
very bottom of the sheet: 'Because we can.'"
- Secretary of Interior Bruce Babbitt,
speech to National Religious Partnership
for the Environment, November 11, 1995
"I reverently believe that the Maker who made us all makes everything in [the
U.S.] but the weather. I don't know who makes that, but I think it must be
raw apprentices in the weather-clerk's factory who experiment and learn
how...then are promoted to make weather for countries that require a good
article, and will take their custom elsewhere if they don't get it. There is
a sumptuous variety about [our] weather that compels the stranger's admiration
- and regret. The weather is always doing something here; always attending
strictly to business; always getting up new designs and trying them on the
people to see how they will go. ?
"But it gets through more business in spring than in any other season. In the
spring I have counted one hundred and thirty-six different kinds of weather
inside of four-and-twenty hours. It was I that made the fame and fortune of
that man that had the marvelous collection of weather on exhibition at the
Centennial...He was going to travel all over the world to get specimens from
all the climes...[but at my invitation he came here] and got hundreds of kinds
of weather that he had never heard of before. And as to quantity - well,
after he had picked out and discarded all that was blemished in any way, he
not only had weather enough, but weather to spare; weather to hire out;
weather to sell; to deposit; weather to invest; weather to give to the
poor..."
- Mark Twain, speech to New England
Society, December, 1876
"Go into the Parks and get their encouragement. Among the serene and
steadfast scenes, you will find the paths of peace and a repose that is
sweeter than sleep. If you are dulled and dazed with the fever and the fret,
or weary and worn, tottering under burdens too heavy to bear, go back to the
old outdoor home...You will come into your own."
- Enos Mills, "Your National Parks",
1916
"When we place historical markers on old battlefields or on homes where our
ancestors were born or where George Washington slept, we are performing a
genuine spiritual act. We are honoring the special spirit that is attached to
a particular place."
- Thomas Moore, "Care of the Soul"
"I am not in favor of building any more roads in the national parks than we
have to build. I am not in favor of doing anything along the lines of so-
called improvements that we do not have to do...I think we ought to keep as
much wilderness in this country as we can. It is easy to destroy a wilderness;
it can be done very quickly, but it takes nature a long time, even if we let
nature alone, to restore for our children what we have ruthlessly destroyed."
- Secretary of Interior Harold Ickes,
speech at conference of state park
authorities, 1935
"The High Sierra wilderness between Yosemite and Mount Whitney is still about
as wild as ever [despite rapid population growth and development in California
over the last 75 years]. National Park and Forest Wilderness designation
protected these. They are public lands that belong to all of us, the envy of
other states and nations that aren't that lucky.
"Back then, we could camp anywhere, find plenty of firewood and drink from any
of the streams. Those days are gone, but not my gratitude that these areas
were set aside with foresight and devotion - nor my vision for the future.
"Instead of denouncing government, public servants and the people who respect,
protect and celebrate the Earth's wild places, we should practice global CPR:
Conserve by using these places more carefully, preserve the wilderness we can
never replace, and restore as best we can he natural and human systems we have
been careless about."
- Conservationist and "archdruid" Dave
Brower, Earth Island Institute, 1996?
"A land ethic for tomorrow should be as honest as Thoreau's 'Walden,' and as
comprehensive as the sensitive science of ecology. It should stress the
oneness of our resources and the live-and-help-live logic of the great chain
of life. If, in our haste to 'progress,' the economics of ecology are
disregarded by citizens and policy makers alike, the result will be an ugly
America. We cannot afford an America where expedience tramples upon esthetics
and development decisions are made with an eye only on the present."
- Secretary of Interior Stewart Udall,
"The Quiet Crisis," 1963
"We need the tonic of wilderness, to wade sometimes in marshes where the
dipper and the waterfowl lurk; to smell the whispering grasses. At the same
time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things, we require that all
things be mysterious and unexplorable, that land and water be infinitely wild,
unsurveyed and unfathomed by us. We can never have enough nature. We must be
refreshed by the sigh of inexhaustible vigor, vast and titanic features, the
wilderness with its living and its decaying trees, the thunder cloud and the
rain that lasts three weeks. We need to witness our own limits surpassed and
some life roaming freely where we may never wander."
- Henry David Thoreau
"National parks are an investment in the physical, mental, and spiritual well-
being of Americans as individuals. They are a gainful investment contributing
to the economy of the nation. They are, moreover, an investment in something
as simple, yet as fundamental as good citizenship - love of country, and
appreciation of the natural and historic fabric of America."
- Director Conrad L. Wirth, "Mission
66" proposal, 1956
"Ours has been the first, and will doubtless be the last, party of whites to
visit this profitless locality."
- Lt. Joseph Ives, among the first
Europeans to view the Grand Canyon
"I want to ask you to do one thing, in your own interest and in the interest
and in the interest of your country - to keep this one great wonder of nature
as it is now. 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, the
sublimity, the great loveliness, and the beauty of the Canyon. Leave it as it
is. You cannot improve upon it. The ages have been at work and man can only
mar it. Keep it for your children, and your children's children, and for all
who come after us as the one great sight that every American should see."
- Teddy Roosevelt, speaking at the
South Rim of Grand Canyon, 1906
"A dark mist lay over the Black Hills, and the land was like iron. At the top
of the ridge I caught sight of Devils Tower upthrust against the gray sky as
if in the birth of time the core of the earth had broken through its crust and
the motion of the world was begun. There are things in nature that engender
an awful quiet in the heart of man; Devils Tower is one of them."
- Novelist N. Scott Momaday
"I have known those dunes for more than 40 years and I give my blessing and
speak earnest prayers for those who are striving for this project. Those
dunes are to the Midwest what the Grand Canyon is to Arizona and the Yosemite
to California. They constitute a signature of time and eternity; once lost,
the loss would be irrevocable."
- Poet Carl Sandburg in a letter to
Senator Paul Douglas (IL), 1958?
" Too often when visiting the countryside, and especially the national parks
and monuments, one expects and usually finds that the more spectacular and
publicized sights will indeed demand the visitor's attention and confound him
with beauty, size, or some other notable quality. Subtlety, patience, and
quietude are therefore qualities not often exercised by most visitors. In
Platt [now Chickasaw NRA], however, breathtaking vistas and dramatic phenomena
have in their stead quiet, pleasant vignettes of nature's ageless ways which
can only be appreciated through cultivation of these qualities of mind and
methods of observation."
- Ballard Barker and William Jameson,
"Platt National Park: Environment and
Ecology," 1975
"It is but sixteen years since the Yosemite was first seen by a white man.
Several visitors have since made a journey of several thousand miles at large
cost to see it, and notwithstanding the difficulties which now interpose,
hundreds resort to it annually. Before many years if proper facilities are
offered, these hundreds will become thousands and in a century the whole
number of visitors will be counted by the millions. An injury to the scenery
so slight that it may be unheeded by any visitor now, will be one of
deplorable magnitude when its effect upon each visitor's enjoyment is
multiplied by these millions. This duty of preservation is the first which
falls upon the state [of California] under the Act of Congress, because the
millions who are hereafter to benefit by the Act have the largest interest in
it, and the largest interest should be first and most strenuously guarded."
- Frederick Law Olmsted, "The Yosemite
Valley and the Mariposa Grove of Big Trees: A
Preliminary Report," 1865
"It started with the President a year or two ago,
He said we must economize to really make a show.
He appointed a committee to see where to begin,
For Uncle Sam's in poverty, he really needs the tin.
His reputation in the past around the country went
'A dollar spent to save ten cents' was money quite well spent.
But now a change is taking place, expenses get the knife.
Economy, economy 1s the watchword of our life.
The word was handed down by Taft to all his right hand men,
And now it's come to you and me and all who push a pen.
A meeting in El Paso to talk economy,
Was attended by the great Moguls of District Number Three.
Now every one has had his say and gone back to the pines,
We wonder where we'll get our pay without digging in the mines.
But coming back to serious thought
And the toils of our daily grind,
Efficiency, efficiency is the word to be kept in mind."
- Anonymous USFS ranger, 1911
"It is but sixteen years since the Yosemite was first seen by a white man.
Several visitors have since made a journey of several thousand miles at large
cost to see it, and notwithstanding the difficulties which now interpose,
hundreds resort to it annually. Before many years if proper facilities are
offered, these hundreds will become thousands and in a century the whole
number of visitors will be counted by the millions. An injury to the scenery
so slight that it may be unheeded by any visitor now, will be one of
deplorable magnitude when its effect upon each visitor's enjoyment is
multiplied by these millions. This duty of preservation is the first which
falls upon the state [of California] under the Act of Congress, because the
millions who are hereafter to benefit by the Act have the largest interest in
it, and the largest interest should be first and most strenuously guarded."
- Frederick Law Olmsted, "The Yosemite
Valley and the Mariposa Grove of Big Trees: A
Preliminary Report," 1865
"The beauties and possibilities of the country appealed to me at once
strongly. No sea-lover could look unmoved on the blue rollers of the Gulf
Stream and the crystal-clear waters of the Reef, of every delicate shade of
blue and green, and tinged with every color of the spectrum from the
fantastically rich growths on the bottom, visible to the last detail through
this incredibly translucent medium. It scarcely resembles northern sea-water
at all - a cold, semi-opaque, grayish-green fluid, which hides the mysteries
of the bottom. Drifting over the Florida Reef on a quiet day one may note
all the details of its tropical luxuriance twenty feet below, and feels
himself afloat on a sort of liquid light, rather than water, so limpid and
brilliant is it."
- Ralph Middleton Munroe, describing
his first visit to the area in 1877,
"The Commodore's Story: The Early Days on
Biscayne Bay," 1930
"What Europe is now is that toward which you in America are tending.
Presently, the steam cars stop some 12 miles away from the entrance of
Yosemite...Surely development should come no closer...If you wee to realize
what the result of the automobile will be to that wonderful, that incomparable
valley, you will keep it out."
- James Bryce, British Ambassador to
the United States, 1912
"The plan is now to build...a drive around [Crater Lake] so that all these
points may be considered in a single day from a carriage. And a great hotel
is planned! And a railroad must be made to whisk you through the life and
vigor-giving evergreen forests of Arden. Well, so be it, if you must so mock
nature and break this hush and silence of a thousand centuries, but I shall
not be here. Not hotel or house or road of any sort should ever be built near
this Sea of Silence. All our other parks have been surrendered to hotels and
railroads. Let us keep this last and best sacred to silence and nature. That
which is not worth climbing to see is not worth seeing."
- "The Seas of Silence," Joaquin
Miller, 1904
"The road recently completed to Paradise Valley should be widened, by all
means, and made safer by retaining walls at every danger point. But it is
doubtful whether automobiles will ever be permitted above the bridge at the
Nisqually glacier. Some automobile owners regard the park as an automobile
club preserve, and insist that nothing more be done toward the opening of its
scenery or the conservation of its forest until it is made safe for them to
run their touring cars into Paradise. This is unfortunate, because it betrays
ignorance of the purpose of Congress in creating the national park, namely the
education and enjoyment of all the people, not the pleasure of a class."
- "The Mountain That Was 'God'," John
H. Williams, 1911.?
"In my experience in connection with [Yellowstone NP], I have been very
forcefully impressed with the danger to which it is subjected by the greed of
private enterprise. All local influence centers in schemes whereby the park
can be used for pecuniary advantage. In the unsurpassed grandeur of its
natural condition, it is the pride and glory of the nation, but, if under the
guise of improvement, selfish interests are permitted to make merchandise of
its wonders and beauties, it will inevitably become a by-word and a reproach."
- Capt. Moses Harris, U.S. Cavalry,
Superintendent, Yellowstone, date unknown
"We come to Denali to watch; to catch a glimpse of the primeval. We come
close to the tundra flowers, the lichens, and the animal life. Each of us
will take some inspiration home; a touch of the tundra will enter our lives -
and, deep inside, make of us all poets and kindred spirits."
- Adolph Murie, "Mammals of Denali"
"The sight that flashed into view as we surmounted the hillock was one of the
most amazing visions ever beheld by mortal eyes. The whole valley as far as
the eye could reach was full of hundreds, no thousands, literally tens of
thousands of smokes curling up from its fissured floor...Pictures cannot bring
back the Valley of the Smokes. They have lost the awesomeness that lies in
the setting. You may build in memory, but never reproduce the scenes which
lie beyond the Katmai Pass. They seem too big to be part of the rest of the
world. They do not connect up with the little things which are built into our
lives."
- Robert F. Griggs and D.B. Church,
Griggs Expedition to Katmai
"'Man cannot live by bread alone.' No, nor by cars (even with tail fins), deep
freezers, split levels, split atoms, and TV. We hope that this beautiful area
will give deep pleasure to many citizens in the future not only for their
well-deserved rest and recreation, but for their realization of quiet hours of
contemplation in settings of great natural serenity; the silent renewal of
their spirit. And let us not forget the wildlife, and especially the birds of
both land and sea. May it give them rest and safety in their travels, and the
wherewithal more surely to survive and multiply for many centuries of the
future."
- Paul Mellon, speech at dedication of
Cape Hatteras National Seashore
"Conservation of archeological remains isn't a luxury. It's a requirement if
we ever hope to know who we are, where we came from, and how we got here."
- Archeologist Nick Honerkamp
"...all the political sentiments I entertain have been drawn...from the
sentiments which originated in and were given to the world from (Independence
Hall)...It was not the mere matter of separation of the colonies from the
motherland, but that sentiment in the Declaration of Independence which gave
liberty not alone to the people of this country, but hope to all the world,
for all future time."
- Abraham Lincoln, address at
Independence Hall, February 22, 1861?
"The important thing is for you to receive a full dividend from (your visit to
a national park)...not only through lungs filled with clean air and eyes
soothed by natural beauty, but spirits enriched beyond immediate understanding.
I myself don't know how to describe (the) ability of the parks to lift up the
soul. One of the best writers on the parks, Freeman Tilden, referred to an
ancient undefined Greek concept of a 'fifth essence,' beyond fire, air, earth,
and water. 'Any thoughtful person,' Tilden wrote, 'may find and meditate upon
this Fifth Essence in his own backyard. Not a woodland brook, not a mountain,
not a field of grass rippling in the breeze does not proclaim the existence of
it. But...a consumate expression of this ultimate wealth of the human
spirit...is to be found in the National Park System...Many a man has come to
find merely serenity or scenic pictures - and has unexpectedly found a renewal
and affirmation of himself.'"
- Director Connie Worth, from his
introduction to "America's Wonderlands:
Our National Parks," 1975
"In the Western Hemisphere we have only the tiniest number of buildings that
can be called temples or shrines. The temples of our hemisphere will be some
of the planet's remaining wilderness areas...The rocky icy grandeur of the
high country - and the rich shadowy bird and fish-streaked southern swamps -
remind us of the overarching wild systems that nourish us all and underwrite
the industrial economy...The wilderness as a temple is only a beginning. One
should not dwell in the specialness of the extraordinary experience nor hope
to leave the political quagg behind to enter a perpetual state of heightened
insight. The best purpose of such studies and hikes is to be able to come
back to the lowlands and see al the land about us, agricultural, suburban,
urban, as part of the same territory - never totally ruined, never completely
unnatural. It can be restored, and humans could live in considerable numbers
on much of it."
- Gary Snyder, "The Practice of the
Wild", 1990
"One of the motives for preserving places of historic interest and natural
beauty is to cultivate in our people the historic sense, the vivid realization
of the life of our ancestors and all the former inhabitants...as a reality
lovingly pictured in the mind, not merely an abstract read of in history
books."
- Freeman Tilden, "The Fifth Essence"
"To preserve the significant places of beauty and majesty of the very land in
which we have our roots; to keep living and accessible and dynamic the steps
of our history so that a self-understanding patriotism of the highest order
will continue to have throughout the future an effortless and natural flow -
this is the covenant by which the National Park Service is bound."
- Freeman Tilden, "The Fifth Essence"
"If Nature is to survive in all its complexity, an awful lot of people from
very diverse groups must agree that it is a mother lode of inner as well as
material resources that in some way enriches everyone. Although we often
overlook or disparage as romantic the effects of natural stimuli on our well-
being, an expanding body of eclectic research shows that almost all of us rely
on nature - whether it is sprouting in a pot or stretching as far as the eye
can see - to excite our senses, restore our nerves, invite us to play, enhance
our social bonds, and supply meaning and metaphor to our lives."
- Winifred Gallagher, "The Power of
Place"?
"Interpretation is a voyage of discovery in the field of human emotions and
intellectual growth, and it is hard to foresee that time when the interpreter
can confidently say, 'Now we are wholly adequate to our task.'"
- Freeman Tilden, "The Fifth Essence"
I got a little detail to the supervisor's shack,
And I hadn't lit in Springer 'til I wished that I was back
On the far end of my district, counting stock or building trail,
For to work inside an office is like doing time in jail.
This bending o'er a table and a-writing all the day,
Is a-making me hump-shouldered and my hair is turning gray.
It sure will be my finish if they don't relieve me soon,
For my bewhiskered, sunburnt features is gettin' paler than the moon.
Some may rant and cuss a little and feel they've got a snob
Cause they haven't been promoted to a supervisor's job;
But I'd rather face the devil, or a bald-faced grizzly bear,
Than this everlasting torment in a super's swivel chair.
I thought that I had troubles when on my district all alone,
But I've found that serious trouble was a thing I'd never known.
When I git back on my district, you can bet your life I'll stay,
And be thankful to my Maker I can draw a ranger's pay.
- Anonymous US Forest Service ranger,
from "Songs of the Forest Ranger," edited
by John D. Guthrie, 1917
"I see an America whose rivers and valleys and lakes - hills and streams and
plains - the mountains over our land and nature's wealth deep under the
earth - are protected as the rightful heritage of all the people..."
- President Franklin Delano Roosevelt,
November 2, 1940
"We have been telling ourselves the story of what we represent in the land for
40,000 years. At the heart of this story, I think, is a simple, abiding
belief: It is possible to live wisely on the land, and to live well. And in
behaving respectfully toward all the land contains, it is possible to imagine
a stifling ignorance falling away from us."
- Barry Lopez, "Arctic Dreams"
"For every far-seeing conservationist, there have been scores or hundreds of
short-sighted practical persons who thought that we should be satisfied with a
small number of areas which in narrow boundaries preserved specific scenes or
wonders of nature. They lost sight of the need for spacious areas, if the
wilderness, with its endowment of plant and animal life, is really to be
preserved as more than a museum piece."
- Horace Albright, Director, National
Park Service, 1929-1933
"Every great landscape carries in its beauty the seeds of its own destruction.
Primitive wilderness characteristics give the national parks their prestige
and will increasingly add to their distinction as these qualities disappear
elsewhere. But these qualities are readily destroyed; they are fragile things.
How preserve them? The answer may well depend upon how clearly we define our
aims."
- Newton B. Drury, Director, National
Park Service, 1940-1951?
"We [in America] enjoy comforts never known before, but they are not enough;
somehow, someway, we must make contact with naturalness, the source of all
life. The frontiers are still too close to forget and the memory of
wilderness goes far back into the eons when man lived close to the earth and
was in tune with the ancient rhythms. We still listen to the song of the
wilderness and longs for a land we have lost. Civilization has not changed
emotional needs which were ours long before it arose. This is the reason for
the hunger, the true meaning of wilderness and the search of moderns for
places where they can know it again. The battle to save the last remnants is
not only a struggle for freedom and beauty, but for the spirit of man in a
world that seems to have lost its balance and perspective."
- Author and former Wilderness Society
president Sigurd Olson, 1973
"The conservation movement has so long been identified with the perpetuation
of things that its spiritual and idealistic content has been overlooked. To
my mind, that constitutes its very essence. Conservation expresses generosity
towards future generations, as opposed to the selfishness of the older and
rejected policy. It represents economy in the use of our physical heritage,
as opposed to the destructive extravagance of the old system. It cultivates
love of beauty in nature and subordinates utilitarian objectives. Above all,
it represents to me not only the conservation of our physical heritage, but
the preservation and development of our spiritual energies."
- Senator Robert F. Wagner
"Remember, it was a great Republic president, Theodore Roosevelt, who set out
nation on the path of conservation. In 1908, he said, 'Any right thinking
parent earnestly desires and strives to leave a child both an untarnished name
and reasonable equipment for the struggle of life. So this nation as a whole
should earnestly desire and struggle to leave to the next generation the
national honor unstained and the national resources unexhausted.' It sounded
good in 1908, and it's even more important as we stand on the edge of a new
century."
- President Bill Clinton, Earth Day, 1996
"It is not crime to be thrifty and prudent, but it is criminal nonetheless to
steal and cheat future generations of the rightful heritage that is theirs."
- Phillip H. Elwood, from "Quotable
Quotes: Relating to Conservation in
General and the National Parks in
Particular," Department of Interior
"You may guess that I have become 'sold' on the national park idea. I have -
and in a big way. Whether one seeks beauty, amusement or education, one is
sure to find it, efficiently organized, but with the iron hand of regulation
craftily concealed beneath the velvet of a real desire to serve."
- Howard Vincent O'Brien, from
"Quotable Quotes: Relating to Conservation
in General and the National Parks in
Particular," Department of Interior
"[During the government shutdown in January], many people, and members of
Congress in particular, wanted to open the parks only because they make
money...too little attention has been paid to the park values that cannot be
added up on a calculator. Many non-economic values are associated with
national parks - keeping our history alive, preserving wildlife and natural
wonders, safeguarding our cultural icons - and we need a new yardstick to
measure them...Putting a price tag on resources that are inherently non-
commercial seems to devalue them in our profit-conscious society. We must not
let that happen to our parks. This raises the question of whether in 100
years our great-grandchildren will treasure Yellowstone or simply value it.
The answer depends on what we do today. If we promote national parks because
they make money, our descendants will preserve them only until a more
lucrative use comes along. But if we acknowledge that the meaning and worth
of national parks comes from elsewhere, if we stress that national parks are
important because of what they teach us about ourselves, then perhaps our
children will treasure them...."
- NPCA Board Chair Virgil Rose,
National Parks Magazine, May/June 1996
"One hundred years from now, as people look back on our use of this continent,
we shall not be praised for our reckless use of its oil, nor the weakening of
our watershed values through overgrazing, nor the loss of our forests: we
shall be heartily damned for all these things. But we may take comfort in the
knowledge that we shall certainly be thanked for the national parks."
- Ray Lyman Wilbur, Secretary of the
Interior, 1931
"The recreational parks must be conserved in their natural state intrenched
[sic] against the inroads of modern civilization so that coming generations as
well as the people of our time may be assured of their use for the purposes of
recreation, education and scientific research."
- Hubert Work, from "Quotable Quotes:
Relating to Conservation in General and
the National Parks in Particular,"
Department of Interior, 1951
"Probably we are not placing too high an appraisal upon the value of National
Park Service programs when we say that they constitute one of the most potent
agencies in effecting mental preparedness and maintaining National morale."
- Carl P. Russell, from "Quotable
Quotes: Relating to Conservation in
General and the National Parks in
Particular," Department of Interior, 1951
"While the national parks serve in an important sense as recreation areas,
their primary use extends far into that fundamental education which concerns
real appreciation of nature. Here beauty in its truest sense received
expression and exerts its influence along with recreation and formal education.
To me the parks are not merely places to rest and exercise and learn. They
are regions where one penetrates the veil to meet the realities of nature and
to appreciate more fully the unfathomable power behind it."
- John C. Merriam, from "Quotable
Quotes: Relating to Conservation in
General and the National Parks in
Particular," Department of Interior, 1951?
"Visits to historic scenes and buildings have become one of the most inspiring
methods of modern education. In this way, men and women obtain an invaluable
corrective to their mental and imaginative outlook, an affectionate sympathy
with the very different lives of their ancestors."
- G. M. Trevelayan, from "Quotable
Quotes: Relating to Conservation in
General and the National Parks in
Particular," Department of Interior, 1951
"The chief biologic and economic reason for preserving wilderness areas is
that they do preserve the balance of nature; that they are the refuge of the
predators, who are constant in their value to us; that they are great
reservoirs of the serene order of nature, where things work the way they ought
to. They are the right answers in the back of the book, from which we can get
help in solving our problems outside them, when we make a mess of things, as
we usually do."
- Donald Culross Peattie, from
"Quotable Quotes: Relating to Conservation
in General and the National Parks in
Particular," Department of Interior, 1951
"Twenty centuries of progress have brought the average citizen a vote, a
national anthem, a Ford, a bank account, and a high opinion of himself, but
not the capacity to live in high density without befouling and denuding his
environment, nor a conviction that such density is the true test of whether he
is civilized."
- Aldo Leopold, from "Quotable Quotes:
Relating to Conservation in General and
the National Parks in Particular,"
Department of Interior, 1951
"The wild things of this earth are not ours to do with as we please. They
have been given to us in trust, and we must account for them to the
generations which will come after us and audit our accounts."
- William T. Hornaday, from "Quotable
Quotes: Relating to Conservation in
General and the National Parks in
Particular," 1951
"A national park, preserved in all its beauty and at the same time made
accessible to the public for all time, is as grand a heritage as it is
possible to leave to future generations."
- Robert Bradford Marshall, from
"Quotable Quotes: Relating to Conservation
in General and the National Parks in
Particular," Department of Interior, 1951
"Conservation is a state of harmony between men and land. By land is meant
all of the things on, over, or in the earth. Harmony with land is like
harmony with a friend; you cannot cherish his right hand and chop off his
left.... The land is one organism. Its parts, like our own parts, compete with
each other and cooperate with each other."
- Aldo Leopold, from "Quotes:
Conservation, Parks, Natural Beauty,"
compiled by Elizabeth H. Coiner,
Department of Interior, 1966?
"Let's get away from the idea that man is always and invariably an intruder in
the wilderness, in nature. He has changed nature greatly, sometimes wisely,
sometimes with the most appalling lack of wisdom. But man is as much a part
of nature and the natural scene as a sequoia or a bear or an eagle. For some
reason, we consider the Indian in his ancient habitat a part of the natural
scene; actually all men are part of it. The more they make themselves a part
of it without changing it foolishly, the better off they are."
- Herbert Evison, former chief of
information, National Park Service, from
"Quotes: Conservation, Parks, Natural
Beauty," DOI, 1966
"To work merely for the present constitutes, from all points of view, a
betrayal of human obligations."
- Rene Dubos, from "Quotes:
Conservation, Parks, Natural Beauty," DOI,
1966
"The term National Park System is a meaningful one. National designates
ownership, responsibility, interest, importance and quality. System implies a
variety of units, combined to form an organic whole with common control and
balance. The distinctive word is park, for it designates a specific type of
land use, perpetuity, purpose and visual character."
- Robert Coates, from "Quotes:
Conservation, Parks, Natural Beauty," DOI,
1966
"The areas administered by the National Park Service have been set aside to
preserve a precious part of our national heritage. It is not always realized,
however, that this heritage requires sympathetic study and presentation if it
is to be of maximum benefit to the public. The interpretative service is
designed to fulfill this need and to contribute to the national education and
to the maintenance of confidence in the American way of living. This service
may well be a potent force in maintaining national equilibrium in the trying
times which appear to lie ahead.
- Director Arthur Demaray, 1951, from
"Quotes: Conservation, Parks, Natural
Beauty," DOI, 1966
"The elements of primary interest in these parks are of many types. They
include some of the greatest known illustrations of magnitude, power, beauty
and antiquity. We know that their influence removes us for the moment from
the weary routine of the commonplace, and develops an attitude of mind
favorable to enjoyment of thought on our greater personal problems."
- John C. Merriam, from "Quotes:
Conservation, Parks, Natural Beauty," DOI,
1966
"The National Park System is a definite expression of the highest in our
American code of government - equality for all."
- Isabelle Story, former Chief of
Information, NPS, from "Quotes:
Conservation, Parks, Natural Beauty," DOI,
1966?
"National Park Service work is humanitarian in nature, philosophical in
purpose, and you might say cultural in impact. In short, we're not dealing
with purely practical considerations. Important though practice may be and
inevitable as problems may be, in the back of all this is a feeling of
humanitarianism...a philosophy. We're dealing with people and with people's
happiness, we're dealing with people's needs."
- Sigurd F. Olson, from "Quotes:
Conservation, Parks, Natural Beauty," DOI,
1966
"It is important to scientific study and to the health and sanity of man, that
there be preserved some unique areas for scientists to observe nature's
continuing evolution; for future generations to know historic landmarks as
they were when history marked them; for dwellers in a crowded planet to have
resort to the grandeur and peace of nature."
- Samuel H. Ordway, Jr., from "Quotes:
Conservation, Parks, Natural Beauty," DOI,
1966
"We inherited the loveliest of all continents. We should bequeath it to our
grandchildren as a land where the majority is disciplined to respect the
values even of a minority. Those values are esthetic or spiritual, and they
reflect the principle that beauty is an end in itself and that man will find
relaxation, renewed strength and inspiration in the wildness of the earth.
We should leave behind a land where those yet unborn will have an opportunity
to hear the calls of loons and come to know that they are more glorious than
any whir of motors."
- Justice William O. Douglas, from
"Quotes: Conservation, Parks, Natural
Beauty," DOI, 1966
"Men need to know the elemental challenges that sea and mountains present.
They need to know what it is to be alive and to survive when great storms ccme.
They need to unlock the secrets of streams, lakes, and canyons and to find how
these treasures are veritable storehouses of inspiration. They must
experience the sense of mastery of adversity. They must find a peak or a
ridge that they can reach under their own power alone."
- Justice William O. Douglas, from
"Quotes: Conservation, Parks, Natural
Beauty," DOI, 1966