Postscript Op-Ed| Railroads And The National Parks

Editor's note: What role did the nation's rail industry play in the national park movement? Dr. Alfred Runte, in response to those who believe it was minimal, maintains the railroads not only helped substantially push the movement along, but opened the Western landscape to many who might not otherwise have seen it.

In responding to my article, Stephen Mather’s Ghost: Revisiting the Consensus for National Parks, five critics take exception that America’s railroads were instrumental in advancing the national park idea. Even if restored today, any railroad would pursue development. “Businesses exist to make a profit, controlled or not by the NPS. In our opinion, Dr. Runte could have emphasized ideas from other prominent national park scholars who have argued for parks being managed in more protective ways.”

Simply, they suggest, if the railroads were ever again to “win,’ it stands to reason the parks would “lose.” And so it was in the past. My perspective is too simplistic, they maintain.

This is to reemphasize how total has been America’s retreat from its railroads. Even educated Americans no longer see the distinctions between railroads and highway transport, especially how the automobile, not the railroad, became the principal destroyer of the national landscape.

As for the parks, I certainly take no credit for “discovering” how the railroads once embraced them. All of my material on Jay Cooke, for example, is the original research of Aubrey L. Haines. I quote from the dust jacket of his book:

Aubrey L. Haines was born in Portland, Oregon. After graduating from the University of Washington with a degree in forestry, he was employed as a park ranger in Yellowstone National Park. Following four years of service with the United States Army Corps of Engineers during World War II, he returned to Yellowstone and, in 1946, was appointed assistant park engineer. In 1959, he was promoted to the newly-created position of Park Historian, remaining in that post until he retired in 1969.

His two-volume history of the park, The Yellowstone Story, then appeared in 1977, itself published by the Yellowstone Library and Museum Association in cooperation with Colorado Associated University Press. In other words, the book was peer-reviewed. A preliminary volume, Yellowstone National Park: Its Exploration and Establishment, was published by the National Park Service and Government Printing Office in 1974.

There anyone may find Jay Cooke—exactly where I found him, along with his path-breaking influence on Yellowstone. Granted, he later went bankrupt. That still detracts nothing from his earlier contribution, which was no less than to orchestrate Ferdinand V. Hayden, Thomas Moran, Nathaniel Pitt Langford, and others, in calling on Congress for a Yellowstone “public park.”

Because that history came first, I naturally opened with it in my article, which PERC Reports asked that I limit to 2,300 words. If readers want more, there is a lot more. My book is called Trains of Discovery: Railroads and the Legacy of Our National Parks. Now in its fifth edition, it has been available since 1984. There is also my Allies of the Earth: Railroads and the Soul of Preservation, published in 2006. It, too, acknowledges my enduring debts to “other prominent national park scholars.”

For more on them, there is National Parks: The American Experience. Now in its fourth edition, it has been available since 1979, and was originally directed as a doctoral dissertation by Roderick Nash, still America’s leading scholar of wilderness and parks.

Simply, it does no good scolding the record. Those who need scolding are the ones ignoring history. Today, the National Park Service Centennial is mostly committees—most of them falling short. How do we know? Because they don’t even heed the agency’s own historians, as if to reinvent history has no consequence.

Last March, for example, there was that business about the University of California “founding” the National Park Service “idea.” The assertion was meant to promote a Berkeley conference about science in the national parks. UC Berkeley and the Park Service were among its co-sponsors.

What is wrong with a little spin? Everything. Misinformation feeds on itself, eventually to build mistrust. It is bad enough that Americans mistrust their government. History should not make the situation worse.

Ultimately, what apparently troubles my critics is that I failed to reinforce their spin. Yes, railroads developed the national parks, but then, the railroads were profit-motivated. As one consequence, only “the rich” could afford to travel while “the poor” were stuck at home.

Maybe, in the early days of parks and railroads travelers were similar enough to be counted as one type of tourist. But we know that other potential park visitors lacked income or social standing to use the railroads for travel to parks. If railroads had an understanding of how Americans understood parks, it could not have been a very diverse understanding.

The trap being set is a familiar one. These days, the moment anyone says diverse, the opposing side in a debate is supposed to buckle. “Maybe?” “Could not have been?” There is no research behind either claim.

Essentially, the rest of the rebuttal is just for show. The reader, too, is supposed to buckle before reaching Frederick Law Olmsted, Joseph Sax, and James Watt.

The ulterior motive is right up front. Because the railroads were profit-motivated, feel free to write them off.

Sorry, no buckling or write-offs allowed. I see the National Park Service Centennial in a different light. It is time to acknowledge everything that threatens wilderness, of which ignorance of the past is one.

For starters, other than by buying a first-class ticket, was there no other way for Americans a century ago to form an impression of their national parks? For example, did only the wealthy read newspapers and magazines? Did those lacking “income or social standing” simply cower in the shadows of national life?

Even if that were true (and it is not), every American city, town, and hamlet had a railroad depot and/or ticket office. Walking past the window, did average Americans—working Americans—not see a poster once in a while? Gee, I would like to go there. Perhaps some day I can afford the trip.

Lavish publicity was the railroads’ specialty—how, in the age before radio, television, movies, and the Internet, they kept the public informed. With specific reference to the national parks, some railroads, notably the Southern Pacific, owned entire magazines (Sunset). At 10 cents a copy and a dollar per year, Sunset was indeed meant to be accessible to the working public. After all, along with promoting the national parks, the Southern Pacific wanted more settlers to head West.

If price mattered, people could always read Sunset at the library or get one from a friend. I still read magazines at the barber shop.

In return, the railroads formed their “understanding” of the public through a myriad of responses, here, by the number of people asking for that poster or magazine. More broadly, the railroads tapped into the culture itself. What books were people reading? What kinds of pictures did they favor? At the state fair, and grandly that occasional world’s fair, what exhibits did they talk about the most?

Count on it. The railroads exhibited at those fairs, and yes, eagerly turned to exhibiting the national parks. Each exhibit would be staffed by ticket agents, passing out literature and gathering public comments.

These days, we wouldn’t even know how to mount a world’s fair. The first objection would be security; the second would be cost. Can’t we just put the exhibits on a smart phone? A century ago, the railroads were master exhibitors, and the public loved them for it.

Diversity

But okay, let’s play “Diversity.” Certainly, the game is all the rage. Granted, if in 1916 my forebears had wanted to visit the national parks as tourists, they simply could not have afforded it.

Besides, my father was indisposed. In 1915, Kaiser Wilhelm II had tapped him on the shoulder and sent him to the trenches on the Western Front. His two brothers were already there.

Our family casualty list? One dead (my Uncle August); one seriously wounded (father); and one so messed up inhaling cordite (Uncle Fritz) he would die of lung cancer at 49. Three years after his death, his son (my cousin Manfred) died at Bougainville in the Solomon Islands while fighting with the Americal Division in World War II.

For most people in the working class, the times were just not propitious for visiting the national parks. However, that is not to say working people were uninformed about the parks, or that America’s railroads, responding to the reality of pleasure travel, were the ones standing in the way.

Today, we should be so lucky as to have America’s original confidence that the country was on a noble path. Was America perfect? Has it ever been? No one argues that. But yes, drawing on America’s confidence—America’s idealism—railroads expecting to profit from the national parks noted meticulously how the parks contributed to national pride.

Simply, pride and profit were still interchangeable. Remember—we are talking about history—the difference between then and now.

The moment Jay Cooke “discovered” Yellowstone, every railroad wanted the same thing. If no railroad today seems to want that (and the few remaining apparently don’t), let us at least keep the history separate. Once upon a time the railroads believed in philanthropy, especially with respect to the national parks.

There, if I have made any contribution to original scholarship, it is to assemble and interpret, among thousands of images, publications, and artifacts, those that advanced the durability of the national park idea, regardless of the source. The point still remains: The railroads were the principal source.

Budweiser? Disney? REI? As shapers of a positive imagery, none has come even close.

Today, business is all about “building market share.” The railroads were building the country. What does any builder say to a population of other builders? Here is how to build. “Make no small plans,” the architect Daniel Burnham advised, offering his design for Union Station (1908) in Washington, D.C. Robert Reamer, as the architect of Old Faithful Inn in Yellowstone (1904), had already heeded that advice.

Great public spaces have always appealed to builders, and so the appeal of the national parks. They are “for the benefit and enjoyment of the people,” the railroads agreed. In the ultimate display of that conviction, all exhibited at the Panama-Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco in 1915. UC Berkeley and Stephen T. Mather as co-founders of the National Park Service “idea?” An enticing bit of spin, but again, a wanting history.

Seven days a week, 24 hours a day, over a period of more than a century, railroads were the principal arteries of American life and commerce. Of course they were profit-motivated, but still as builders of the country, remains the point.

What is the distinction between a builder and a developer? Take a look. Your whole country has filled with developers. Have you seen anything like Old Faithful Inn lately? No, but you sure have seen a lot of new shopping centers, strip malls, billboards, and graffiti, and as a reminder for those living in Park City, Aspen, Jackson, Lake Tahoe, and Bend, thousands of so-called log cabins that are anything but.

The railroads were selling access, not sprawl. No doubt, the Western land grants were extremely generous. However, none was finally awarded until each increment of a railroad had been built. Consequently, the railroads eventually forfeited 50 million acres (out of 180 million) for noncompliance with the terms of their grants.

As for James J. Hill, he actually did have a land grant (the seventh largest), that from a preexisting railroad in Minnesota. Purchasing that, he then leveraged its land grant of 2.5 million acres to help facilitate construction of his allegedly “landless” Great Northern Railway.

Why the land grants and government loans? To speed construction—to build the country. Abraham Lincoln knew the importance of having the Union joined. On the West Coast, California and Oregon were already states. No less important, with the onset of the Civil War, Lincoln recognized the need for healing the country once peacetime had returned. Jobs and a bold project would help accomplish that.

In those days, the term “business basis” did not mean just profit and loss. It also meant ensuring that the country would last. Later applied to the national parks, it meant building those to last, as well.

Surely Dr. Runte, being an historian, knows that there never has been a clear idea about what parks should be–or are. Further, railroads have never been noted to have the pulse of all Americans when it comes to national parks.

Again, “never” is pretty big territory, and here it is being used twice. Is not permanence, “inalienable for all time,” a clear idea about what the parks should be—and are? Did Jay Cooke say anything about selling Yellowstone off to the highest bidder? No, he asked for “a public park forever” (italics mine). I will put that “forever” against my critics’ “never” any day of the week.

Yes, every railroad wanted to benefit from the leases—tourism—but it is precisely because railroads kept taking the pulse of America that the inalienability of the parks was assured.

Are the parks monuments; are they ecology; are they wilderness; are they playgrounds? Yes, those things we continue to argue, but not the permanence of the parks themselves. The business model of the railroads indeed was permanence, that in contrast to the automobile, which by unleashing a transportation free-for-all, gobbled up the parks from within.

Here is where those losing at Diversity, like Monopoly, always begin to cheat. You can’t put your token on that square! You can’t say America—you can’t say the people—until every possible victim has been identified.

If at any time—and in any place—some injustice still prevailed, you can’t talk about America the Beautiful. Lynching, strike-breaking, native dispossession—you name it—all prove that America was one big mess.

No, those things only prove that America still had grave injustices, as was true all the way back to Jamestown. When my cousin Manfred died in World War II, he was not fighting to spread those injustices. He was rather fighting to end injustice. There is the confidence America had—and no longer has—every time an injustice plays out in the news.

Railroads emboldened America’s confidence and, by World War II, had secured middle-class status for millions. Meanwhile, they had not been sitting on their hands, waiting to be told what the public wanted. That is not how any business grows.

The general public was always in focus. Between 1885 and 1906, for example, anyone not privileged to visit Yellowstone in the flesh might visit for just six cents in postage. On receiving your six cents in postage stamps, Charles S. Fee, General Passenger Agent, Northern Pacific Railway, St. Paul, Minnesota, would affix them to a manila envelope containing a copy of Wonderland, the railroad’s 100-page, annual guidebook to Yellowstone and the Pacific Northwest.

Several days later, Wonderland would be in your mailbox. Did Charles S. Fee care whether you were rich or poor? Of course not. He only cared that you had shown an interest in Yellowstone National Park.

How did the railroads know that Americans wanted more parks? Because Fee alone needed 40,000 copies of Wonderland every year.

Posters from the railroads. Free. Brochures, postcards, calendars, and timetables. Free. Send in the coupon from our ad (and there were thousands of ads). We will send you a keepsake of the national parks you and your family can cherish forever.

Among the thousands still available on Ebay and at auction houses, you won’t get any for free. The point is: Thousands remain because the railroads distributed them by the millions, after which many were lovingly saved.

Think now of Budweiser’s image of the Statue of Liberty, offered for the Centennial next year. Will you lovingly save that beer can? Learn anything from it? The spirit of Charles S. Fee rests his case: A railroad image was about building dreams—and confidence. You mean to say we have such places in America? How wonderful! Perhaps someday I can see them, too.

Heading West

As for that someday, it came as early for many lacking income and social standing as it did for America’s rich. After all, someone had to build the railroads and staff the park hotels. Wanting to see the West, many found ways other than buying a ticket.

Millions went west, is the point, among them my maternal grandfather, who actually did it twice, originally arriving in New York City from Germany without a cent to his name. Earning his passage to America, he had hired out in the boiler room of his ship.

The year was 1891. Job by job, he worked his way to South Dakota. A skilled rider (trained in the German cavalry), his last job was caring for horses. As a final steppingstone to buying his own farm, he pinched every penny he made.

To his property he then added 40 acres still available under the Homestead Act. Remember that? Free land from the federal government. You bet millions headed west.

They didn’t sit around and whine, waiting for future apologists to call them disadvantaged. And while heading west—even on a third-class train—they saw all of America’s greater diversity.

The second time grandfather traveled west, he in fact took the train. It was 1910, and he was bringing home a second wife from Germany, his first wife having died in childbirth.

Six years later there would be a National Park Service. Seriously, does anyone mean to suggest that only “one type of tourist” knew about it—or the parks? An avid reader, grandfather knew all about the West. If the title said West, he devoured it. (He loved South Dakota.)

As for actually visiting the national parks, he simply didn’t have the time. In season (and farmers always had a season), he worked a 16-hour day, moving in 1914 to a diary farm just south of Binghamton, New York. (Grandmother had hated South Dakota).

His new schedule? Up at four to milk the cows and feed the horses. After breakfast, off to the fields until noon. No tractor. He walked behind the horses, guiding the plow with his arms.

After lunch, back to the fields with the horses. At five, time again to milk the cows. After dinner, the milk cans had to be set out for pickup (ever lift a milk can?) along with completing needed chores. If he was lucky, before turning in at eight, he got to enjoy one pipe and a few pages of Owen Wister, Mark Twain, or Zane Grey.

The national parks? They would have to wait.

His friends and neighbors were just as busy. It was still an agrarian age, after all. It would not tip urban until 1920, when finally half of America’s population lived in towns and cities of 2,500 plus.

That said, still an “understanding” of the national parks was close at hand—in still the flood of railroad lithographs, brochures, timetables, advertisements, calendars, posters, postcards, luggage stickers, ink blotters, traveling exhibits, and sponsored lectures. Even railroad freight cars were put to work, lettered to herald the “Yellowstone Park Line,” “Glacier Park Route,” or “Route of the Grand Canyon Limited.”

Maybe someday I can afford it. Maybe someday I will have the time.

Not enough diversity? Let’s continue our review. Looking out the window from his train, grandfather would have seen a plethora of diversity. After initially building the railroads beginning in the 19th century, thousands of workers were still needed to maintain and improve the rights-of-way.

Their ethnicity? The railroads hired every ethnicity, which again, brought a diverse population—not just wealthy travelers—right up to the doors of the national parks.

At Grand Canyon, the door opened just 100 yards from the rim. Does anyone really mean to suggest that working people were barred from those 100 yards?

To the contrary. Still as late as 1929, nearly 2 million Americans (out of 130 million total) worked for the railroads, further including telegraphers, dispatchers, station agents, freight agents, passenger agents, engineers, conductors, firemen, and many more. Even the smallest American town had a railroad depot. In major cities, stations still rose to palaces.

And yes, let us not forget the Railway Post Office. Remember the days before zip codes when Americans still knew geography—and how to spell?

The trains proper were staffed by African-American men. In the dining car they cooked and waited on tables; in the Pullman sleeping cars they made up the rooms. In the stations they were the majority of redcaps, hustling luggage to and fro. Most chair cars also had an attendant, as did parlor cars, lounge cars, and baggage cars.

Where trains were serviced or otherwise repositioned, car interiors were cleaned and scrubbed. Here, as distinct from when the trains were in motion, minority women often performed those tasks.

And let us not forget the Harvey Girls. Who were they? Among the first working women to see Grand Canyon while staffing El Tovar—and other famous railroad hotels—along the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe.

Did the Harvey Girls lack “social standing?” Well, because they waited tables and said “Yes, sir,” I suppose we could agree they lacked social standing. The point is that they did not lack initiative—or opportunity—if they really wished to see the West.

Many fulfilled that wish, further including the thousands of young people—principally college students—who worked the park concessions. Especially at Glacier, Yellowstone, and Grand Canyon, the vast majority arrived by train.

Yosemite’s “Curry Coolies,” as they called themselves, had to disembark at El Portal, while those working Zion, Bryce, and the North Rim of Grand Canyon rode the train to Cedar City, Utah. From there they were shuttled by bus. No matter, their fare was again either reduced or included with one’s contract.

Only someone intimidated by this history would reject it out of hand. Why the intimidation? For one, because we no longer “see” the history on the land. All we see now is sprawl.

For another, the Park Service grew up with the automobile; by 1930, the railroad era was winding down. As do we, the modern Park Service knows only asphalt. Relying on railroads again would mean giving up “control.” We don’t do railroads at the Denver Service Center.

Shuttle buses still need asphalt. Okay, we’ll let them in. Otherwise, we need an excuse to keep railroads out. At South Rim, the Grand Canyon Railway is called “entertainment.” People being “entertained,” the superintendent once told me, are less serious about the park.

Should that argument fail (and it has), there is always the argument here. Because the railroads were profit-motivated, they could never have been serious about preservation.

The automobile? The mobile home? The tour bus? The airplane? The helicopter? The Grand Canyon Skywalk? And those are the preservationists?

Truly, our postmodern look at history—as distinct from how those who made the history saw themselves—is beginning to sound pretty lame.

The Rest of the Story

Now you know the risk of playing Diversity—the risk of sounding lame. However, if we must continue playing, again, let us at least get the history right.

When the railroads declined, African-Americans were the biggest losers, having little where else to turn. Yes, America in the railroad age spawned a Jim Crow South, lingering racism in the North, and millions of members in the Ku Klux Klan. But that age also had the Pullman Company—and a hundred major railroads—turning America’s eyes to something positive. On the trains, greeting and serving the American traveler, a black man could stand tall.

On Diversity’s game board, that square is labeled “menial labor.” Oh, and everyone else had it easy? No one had it easy, is still the point. Miners, loggers, farmers, seamstresses, maids, cooks, railroad workers. It was a 16-hour day and six-day week for everyone.

At least the minorities working the trains could see something of America, perhaps even a national park. Although low-paid, the jobs were prestigious, including starched uniforms denoting class.

Improving their pay, African-Americans got tips, infamously 10 cents from John D. Rockefeller. In contrast, Bing Crosby is remembered for having tipped $900 when leasing out a private car served by four.

Yes, “the boss man”—the Pullman Company and the railroads—did everything possible to hold wages down. But that again meant everyone’s wages, not just those of African-Americans. Their tips the railroads could not control.

By itself, tipping—the generosity of travelers—propelled tens of thousands of African-American families into the middle class. When the railroads collapsed, those families were left with what? Well-meaning activists telling black men to “retrain”; social scientists demanding government welfare; but no practical way of recouping enough jobs to replace those lost.

More specifically, the kind of jobs lost. No need for college; no need for special skills, but yes, prestige and respect, and finally—for the first time in a century—the income needed to put your kids through college.

Few saw it because America was distracted, ultimately by the war in Vietnam. Nor were the airlines and Detroit shedding tears. But that is what happened to the black man, and why he still struggles to regain his feet. Gangs? Family abandonment? Drugs? All were worsened by the rapidity of losing so many jobs requiring little more than loyalty and commitment.

Just as the Civil Rights Movement reached its peak, the railroads reached their nadir. On the railroads, African-Americans—as the majority minority—suddenly found themselves out in the cold.

We should have saved our trains, good people, before singing “We Shall Overcome.”

Confirming the enormity of the transition, I took the time to ask, interviewing dozens of former railroad workers before they passed away.

A favorite source was Meredith, in the 1980s shining shoes at SeaTac Airport. He of course considered that a demotion, although it still paid tips. The job he longed for, and still called “his best job ever,” was the one he had ultimately lost. He had been a sleeping car attendant for the Pullman Company, starting in 1941.

How good was that job? Good enough to buy a house and put three children through college. “I did it all on my tips,” he confessed.

No less important was the pride. “Your neighbors saw that uniform and looked up to you. They knew you had money in your pocket.”

The airlines? He was blunt. “The airlines never wanted the black man. They just wanted pretty girls. I asked a couple times, but they said no.”

Say all you will that the railroads were not diverse. Like the national parks, it just isn’t true. There again, let us not forget the Buffalo Soldiers assigned to patrol the national parks. Granted again, they were not wealthy, nor visitors per se, but they were Americans forming an “understanding” of the inalienability of national parks.

If only the wealthy traveled—as in traveled first-class for pleasure—that was the times, not the railroads’ doing. And still the rest of it—98 percent of travel—was America on the move.

Trigger Warning

Today, our enemy is not the profit-motive; it is rather our failure to sustain that confidence. We instead get in everyone’s face. See here, Dr. Runte. I want you to tell us about the Chinese and how many died while building the Central Pacific Railroad across the Sierra Nevada.

Ignoring the exaggerated figure, any death is a tragedy, as it was a tragedy when Irish-American workers died while building the Union Pacific from the east. Civilization is never far away from tragedy, either natural or human made. The point is that by dwelling on tragedy you never get past it long enough to understand how far the nation has come—and why.

Challenging my students to see that, I would ask: Where else would you live? What other country would you fly to? While everyone seems to be flying here, why does no one seem to be flying “there?”

Although the railroads were never perfect, they further assured that immigrants kept coming here. Every time a railroad grew confident, so did society. If government alone is capable of advancing national confidence, it sure hasn’t proved it thus far.

Think of it this way. Absent our individual profit-motive (higher wages), and “their” profit motive (bigger dividends), how would government pay its bills? What would government tax?

As for the environment, there again, partisans find the truth hard to accept. The moment our culture abandoned the “old-fashioned” environmentalism of the railroads, we got interstate highways and sprawl. Not the railroads, but rather the automobile led to the homogenization of our country—and our parks.

Rather than acknowledge its own complicity, the Park Service itself seeks to rewrite the history. Just say diversity; just invent some “trigger warning” that keeps our role as developers off the radar.

Although unofficial, note the trigger warnings here. "Alfred Runte associates with PERC." The company he keeps is “bothersome” and “lurking.” “Whether the principles of PERC are those appropriate for national parks is debatable.”

Allow me a trigger warning. Stop hanging around the student center picking the debate you want and get your butts back in the library. There you will find many debates, the most informative not of anyone’s choosing. I didn’t choose to write this history; it is in fact the history.

As for PERC, they have never claimed to be infallible, but they happen to believe in libraries and history. They will listen to what anyone has to say.

Certainly, the three PERC conferences I have been privileged to attend would put most universities these days to shame, both for freedom of expression and intellectual rigor.

If that troubles anyone, look in the mirror. Accusing the messenger is weak. From where I sit, the onus is on the present to get its act together before rushing to condemn the past.

In the example here, the railroads did good things, and yes, some bad things. But that has always been the truth of institutions. Nation states also rise and fall.

Human perfection is forever elusive. All we can hope, for America at large, is that people resolve to repeat only the best things about their country, of which our national parks remain high on the list.