The prime attractions of Yellowstone were about to be completely surrounded and exploited. ibid.
He [John Muir] had soon grown restless to travel again. ibid.
Here the glaciers marched right down to the sea ... Alaska, he wrote, is Nature’s own reservation, and every lover of wildness will rejoice with me that by kindly frost it is so well preserved. ibid.
Muir threw himself into what became a pitched battle to preserve the high company. ibid.
Muir was hurt but endured it all, going directly to the people. ibid.
There were now four national parks. Flushed with the success of his first venture into the world of politics, Muir immediately began making new plans. He wanted more parks, bigger parks, and more park supporters to defend them against the enemies he knew would oppose them. He was right. ibid.
Now the nation stretched all the way to the Pacific. Ken Burns, The National Parks: The Last Refuge 1890-1903
The park idea, not yet a quarter century old, still seemed an uncertain experiment. ibid.
Having created the National Parks, Congress had not seen fit to provide some kind of an authority to oversee them. ibid.
No-one was more thankful for the army’s presence than John Muir. ibid.
There was still no federal law giving Yellowstone’s caretakers’ clear authority to protect its wildlife, including its dwindling herd of wild buffalo. ibid.
Muir considered forests sacred; he wanted them treated as parks. ibid.
Before his [Roosevelt] presidency was over he would create five new national parks, fifty-one national bird sanctuaries, four national game refuges, eighteen national monuments, and more than 100 million acres worth of national forests. Ken Burns, The National Parks: Leave It As It Is 1903-1915
On January 11th 1908 declaring the Grand Canyon ‘an object of unusual scientific interest, being the greatest eroded canyon within the United States’ Roosevelt set aside 860,400 acres as a national monument. ibid.
Four years after Muir’s death, work on the dam he had opposed with all his strength began. ibid.
The battle of Hetch Hetchy had been the last for John Muir, the mountain prophet who had done so much to save the remaining vestiges of pristine America. Ken Burns, The National Parks: The Empire of Grandeur 1915-1916
In John Muir’s absence a new leader would step forward ... Stephen Mather. ibid.
Twain’s colourful descriptions helped launch his career. ibid.
Mather convened a group that drafted the nuts and bolts language of a Bill to create a separate parks bureau within the interior department. ibid.
5He [Sheldon] embarked on field trips to observe North American sheep. Ken Burns, The National Parks: The Windows of Heaven 1916-1919
Back in New York Sheldon began promoting the idea of making McKinley a national park. ibid.
Mather became enthusiastic about the scenic attractions of Utah and the south-western deserts. ibid.
It is the grandest canyon on Earth: 277 miles long, ten miles wide, a mile deep. ibid.
Powell’s expedition was a huge success and brought the Grand Canyon to national attention. ibid.
In 1919 Congress at last passed a Bill creating Grand Canyon National Park. ibid.
Mather ... wanted more National Parks. He wanted them within reach of everyone. And he wanted them promoted to the American people as one cohesive system. Ken Burns, The National Parks: Going Home 1920-1926
Of all the judgments Mather made in the early years none would have a greater impact on the number of people visiting national parks than his decision to embrace the automobile. ibid.
The man every ranger looked up to was Stephen Mather. ibid.
By the mid-1920s more than 300,000 acres had been clear-cut. ibid.
Proposed dams in Sequoia, Glacier and Yellowstone were stopped. And in the Grand Canyon all of Cameron’s projects were stopped too. ibid.
Glen and Bessie Hyde got back in their boat. And disappeared. Ken Burns, The National Parks: The Dance of Life 1927-1933
As far back as 1882 General Phil Sheridan had argued that Yellowstone Park needed to be made even bigger. ibid.
Four months later Albright was invited to Rockerfeller’s New York Office to discuss the Tetons again. ibid.
The Parks, Stephen Mather proudly proclaimed, do not belong to one state or to one section. They had become democratised. ibid.
Each park was to have one major road. ibid.
The final straw for Robert Sterling Yard was Mather’s plans for highways in every park. ibid.
No-one admired Mather more than Horace Albright. ibid.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt decided to intervene – to take up the shortfall the President allocated $1.5 million in scarce federal funds to complete the land purchases. ibid.
In July of 1929 a 90-year-old woman returned to the Yosemite Valley in California. She was called Maria Labrado. And 78 years earlier as a young girl she had been known by her real name: Totuya [Foaming Water]. The granddaughter of Chief Tenaya. Leader of the Ahwahneechee. An Indian tribe who for centuries had called the Valley their home until in 1851 a battalion of men had driven them out at bayonet point. Ken Burns, The National Parks, Great Nature 1933-1936
An economic catastrophe that threatened the foundation of American society. Followed by a way that threatened the existence of freedom throughout the world. ibid.
Within days Roosevelt would sign two executive orders initiating a sweeping reorganisation that overnight transformed the parks service. ibid.
National Parks embraced the idea of America itself. ibid.
George Wright: The very heart of the national parks system – preserving wildlife in its natural state. ibid.
In Franklin Delano Roosevelt the National Parks had found their greatest friend in the White House since the presidency of his cousin Theodore Roosevelt a generation earlier. ibid.
Over the course of the Depression over three million men would find work at one time or another with Civilian Conservation Corps. ibid.
The President’s irascible Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes ... fought battles on every front. One of his first acts was to abolish the Department’s segregated lunch-rooms. Then he told National Parks in the South to simply ignore local Jim Crow laws requiring separate facilities for blacks. Ken Burns, The National Parks: Not for the Rich Alone 1936-1945
Chiura Obata had arrived in the United States in 1903 at age 17, a promising young painter ... For three months he and two other artist friends tramped the high country taking in all the park had to offer. ibid.
In 1938 a book arrived at Harold Ickes’ office ... Stunning images ... captured by an aspiring photographer Ansel Adams. ibid.
Kings Canyon National Park, a roadless Park. ibid.
Park budgets were cut to a quarter of their pre-war levels. ibid.
Adams ... had photographed the Manzanar Internment Camp. ibid.
Wyoming politicians who had learned of Rockefeller’s scheme did everything they could to thwart his plan. ibid.
The balancing act between preservation and use would be severely tested. Ken Burns, The National Parks: Poets and Kindred Spirits 1946-1963
Pressure for more dams only intensified. ibid.
In October 1968 Lloyd Miller was peering over the shoulder of President Johnson as he created Biscayne National Monument, saving 173,000 acres of the Bay, coral reefs and islands. Ken Burns, The National Parks: Voice of the Wilderness 1963-1980
38 National Parks and roughly 200 historic sites, national monuments and other places Americans had set aside for posterity. By the 1970s the Park idea had spread to Yellowstone all the way around the world. ibid.
More than 4,000 Parks in nearly 200 nations. ibid.