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I'll let the scholars debate this subject further, but wanted to add some additional documentation pertaining to this discussion.
In the Annual Report of the first (and only) Superintendent of National Parks, R.B. Marshall in 1916 acknowledged (pg. 3) that there were three classes of tourists to the national parks:
"The three general classes of tourists who visit our parks are: Those to whom the expense is of little moment; those who, in moderate financial circumstances, travel in comfort but dispense with luxuries; and, third,
those who, fired with the love of God's out-of-doors, save their pennies in anticipation of the day when they may feast their eyes upon the eternal expanse of snow-clad peaks and azure skies."
Marshall went on to insighfully say:
"Any plan, however, which may be devised for the management of our national parks should not be predicated upon the assumption that their function is solely to accommodate and retain our tourists in this country."
Stephen Mather, then Assistant to the Secretary of the Interior, wrote in 1916 "Progress on the Development of the National Parks" (pg. 4):
"Informing the People. Realizing that success depends ultimately upon public support, and knowing that the people were surprisingly ignorant of the extent, variety, magnificence, and economic value of their national parks, I early inaugurated an earnest campaign of public education under the management of Robert Sterling Yard."
"To this end the information circulars were immediately rewritten, reorganized, and distributed under a new and effective plan. Last winter a descriptve booklet entitled 'Glimpses of our National Parks' was written by Mr. Yard to meet special educational needs. The astonishing demand that immediately developed for this book assured me that the public was eager for the facts."
"I followed this in the early summer by the publication, with the financial cooperation of 17 western railroads, of Mr. Yard's 'National Parks Portfolio,' an elaborately illustrated volume written and designed for the purposes of differentiating the principal national parks and presenting an adequate pictorial representation of each. An edition of about 275,000 of these was distributed over specially compiled lists and reached
appreciative hands. Forty-three thousand dollars were contributed by the railroads toward the cost of issuing these portfolios, and this sum represented only a small part of the contributing railroads' total expenses in advertising the national parks reached by their respective lines."
This was accompanied by a two-page map (pg. 20-21) showing the major rail lines west of Chicago. On pg. 9 Mather went on to say:
"National Parks to Pay Their Own Way. It has been your desire that ultimately the revenues of the several parks might be sufficient to cover the costs of their administration and protection and that Congress should only be requested to appropriate funds for their improvement. It appears that at least five parks now have a proven earning capacity sufficiently large to make their operation on this basis feasible and practicable. They are Yellowstone, Yosemite, Mount Rainier, Sequoia and General Grant."
Mather went on to say (pg. 27):
"Of first importance is the creation of the national park service, which makes all things possible."
"Of perhaps equal importance is the practical establishment on sound business lines of the princicple Government participation in concessioners' profits, which makes eventual financial indepedence for the national parks possible, and, wise administration, probable."
"Also of great importance is the creation of a spirit of hearty cooperation among concessioners, railroads, and park officials. There is much still lacking here, but the beginnings are inspiring."
The next year (1917), then Acting Director Horace Albright, in the first Director's Annual Report of the newly formed National Park Service, commented (pg. 17-18):
"Substantial Help of the Railroad...The three national park trip of the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad, including Rocky Mountain, Yellowstone, and Glacier National Parks, and the 'two national parks in two weeks' trip (Yellowstone and Rocky Mountain National Parks) of the Chicago & North Western and Union Pacific lines are instances of the efforts of the railroads to stimulate tourist travel to more than one park during the summer season. Practically no western railroad confined itself to promotion of travel to one particular park. The Northern Pacific Railway encouraged travel to Yellowstone and Mount Rainier National Parks. The Great Northern Railway promoted Glacier National Park and Lake Chelan in the Cascades. The Southern Pacific lines induced travel to Yosemite, Sequoia, Lassen Volcanic, and Crater Lake National Parks, and also to Roosevelt Dam via the Apache Trail, and to Lake Tahoe in connection with park trips. The Santa Fe promoted both the Yosemite National Park and the Grand Canyon Monument. The Denver & Rio Grande Railroad extensively advertised the Mesa Verde National Park, the Colorado and Wheeler National Monuments, and offered various side trips to Taos and the Cliff Dwellings of the Pajario Plateau. The Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul system encouraged travel to both Yellowstone and Mount Rainier National Parks. The Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific lines devoted attention to the inducement of travel to several
of our national playgrounds. The same may be said of the activities of the Missouri Pacific system and the Iron Mountain lines. The Salt Lake route began the promotion of Zion Canyon (Mukuntuweap National Monument) and the other monuments in southern Utah. The Union Pacific system also aided in the development of travel to Mount Rainier Park and Zion Canyon in addition to the attention that it gave the Yellowstone and Rocky Mountain regions."
"The tourist bureaus and commercial organizations of the West have joined the railroads in making the national park system the general inducement for western travel, establishing them as the 'permanent expositions' of the West, as they were designated in 1915 in a speech made by Director Mather in San Francisco."
"The work that the travel bureaus of the express companies have done in the way of encouraging American travel in the park system is also worthy of special mention. A very useful pocket guidebook of the national parks, which includes the authorized rates for the 1917 season, was issued early in the spring by the Wells Fargo Express Co. and very wide circulation was given to it."
Just thought I'd toss out some additional food for thought.
The following comment is from Dr. John Lemons, Emeritus Professor of Biology and Environmental Science, Department of Environmental Studies, University of New England.
In our article ‘The Importance of Railroads in the Evolution of National Parks’ myself and four colleagues rebutted issues raised in Alfred Runte’s initial article in National Parks Traveler (NPT), ‘Stephen Mather’s Ghost: Revisiting the Consensus for National Parks,’ which itself was first published by conservative land–use think tank PERC.
In his rebuttal to our paper in NPT, Dr. Runte goes to great length to argue in a second paper, ‘Railroads and the National Parks’, some of the initial critical points raised about his article.
The biggest problem in Dr. Runte’s rebuttal is that he introduces issues that we did not, and he fails to address some issues that we made. Basically, Dr. Runte turned what should have been an author’s traditional response to readers’ comments into a long article, beyond typical rebuttal length. Our rebuttal focused on only a few of Dr. Runte’s assertions that he attributed to us.
One, we did take issue with Dr. Runte’s statement that ‘It was under the railroads that Americans had formed a clear understanding of what parks should be.’ Our response was that ‘…railroads have never been noted to have the pulse of all Americans when it comes to national parks.’ The railroads’ views about national parks never have amounted to much in the record of historical works, archives from the National Park Service (NPS), Congressional legislative history, individual parks’ management policies, legislative archives, case law, or academic scholarship. There simply have been no definitive conclusions that indicate that executives of railroads knew what the national park idea meant or that their conclusion held sway with Congress or the NPS or the American public. No one knew a definitive conclusion of the meaning of national parks–it was a point of contention. And still is. With one exception, all courts or venues in which the meaning of NPS legislation was an issue, courts and others made decisions that the fiduciary NPS mandate was to be consistent with the Organic Act of 1916, as Amended. Through the years, there has been no deviation from this kind of decision.
Two, Dr. Runte again devotes a considerable number of words in defense of Jay Cooke. The point, or question, that we asked in our article was: Why Runte should make Jay Cooke an ‘emblematic’ person in fostering the national park idea? Remember, the context for the question lies within Runte’s assertion that parks should be managed on a ‘business basis’ similar to how railroads were managed. Hence, it is appropriate to raise questions about the use of Jay Cooke as an emblematic person for fostering the national park idea, especially because Cooke went bankrupt, his railroad went bankrupt, and because he was involved in dubious business dealings with Canadian Prime Minister Sir John A. Macdonald that contributed to Macdonald’s defeat for prime minister in the 1873 election. Again, our point is that if one is to use someone from the railroads as an example in guiding national park policies and management, Jay Cooke is probably not a good choice.
Third, Runte devotes a large amount of his rebuttal article to issues of diversity–issues that we never addressed to any great extent, other than to say most early park visitors using trains to national parks were upper middle or higher in economic class. Runte wants to attribute to the railroads high standards in promoting diversity (e.g., ‘blacks had jobs in railroad cars and, through the public’s tipping this propelled them into the middle class.’). Now is not the time to discuss Runte’s views on diversity, and it is not our role to enter the discussion since Runte’s discussion has nothing or little to do with anything we said. Other readers with a greater understanding of diversity issues might wish to reread Runte’s rebuttal and offer some comments.
Fourth, Runte dismisses in a sentence or two the philosophies about national park experiences described by such writers as Edward Abbey, Joseph Sax, and Jonathan Livingston. We assert that their philosophies are much more in line with a nonconsumptive, reflective, and contemplative relationship with national parks; there is nothing in Runte promotion of railroads that indicate expression of any of the values typified by Abbey, Sax, and Livingston.
Fifth and finally, in his articles Runte fails to deal with the role of private enterprise in lobbying Congress and trying to make national park policies more developmentally–oriented (e.g., the efforts by Music Corporation of America to expand development in Yosemite, the efforts by Delaware North Corporation & Resorts to copyright historical Yosemite names, etc.). Runte’s first article in NPT was first published by PERC. PERC, as we mentioned in our response to Runte’s first article is a conservative neoliberal organization dedicated to absence of federal land ownership and policies within states’ boundaries, the use of an unfettered free market enterprise system to reduce conflicts between states and the federal government, and entranpenural relationships that focus on rights of private property owners and those active in the free market. PERC does not want more land protected by the federal government and has argued that management of some federally protected lands be given to private land owners or businesses. Most people who publish with PERC do not do so in professional peer–reviewed journals.
First, am I reading this right? Dr. Lemons is asserting the following: “The railroads’ views about national parks never have amounted to much in the record of historical works, archives from the National Park Service (NPS), Congressional legislative history, individual parks’ management policies, legislative archives, case law, or academic scholarship. There simply have been no definitive conclusions that indicate that executives of railroads knew what the national park idea meant or that their conclusion held sway with Congress or the NPS or the American public.”
With all due respect to Dr. Lemons, I find it hard to believe that any academic would ever make such a categorical statement, especially pertaining to sources outside his field. Any one of the categories listed above could represent a lifetime of research, especially the archives of the National Park Service, Record Group 79.
In short, where did Dr. Lemons get all of those lifetimes? How does he know what so many records hold?
No one could possibly know, is the point. His rebuttal remains pure assumption meant to convey a prejudice, in this case that no corporation could have defended wilderness—nor are conservatives interested in defending it now.
“Fifth and finally, in his articles Runte fails to deal with the role of private enterprise in lobbying Congress and trying to make national park policies more developmentally–oriented (e.g., the efforts by Music Corporation of America to expand development in Yosemite, the efforts by Delaware North Corporation & Resorts to copyright historical Yosemite names, etc.).”
Again, he obviously has not read my YOSEMITE: THE EMBATTLED WILDERNESS, which is all about that issue. Peer-reviewed and published by the University of Nebraska Press, it has been available in national libraries since 1990. I am also on record in The Traveler, AP News, and elsewhere that Delaware North is running a scam.
Which brings us back to our railroads. They were not running a scam. They hoped to profit outside the parks, not on the inside. They only built the hotels because no one else would. A 90-day season in the Rocky Mountains? No one made a profit from that. But extra tourists on existing trains? Read Louis W. Hill. He is in my article.
Or don’t take my word for anything. Still the history is not going away. Further in the category of “academic scholarship” Dr. Lemons alleges has “never amounted to much,” there is Richard J. Orsi, SUNSET LIMITED: THE SOUTHERN PACIFIC RAILROAD AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE AMERICAN WEST 1850-1930. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005. The holder of a Ph.D. in history from the University of Wisconsin, Dr. Orsi is Professor Emeritus of History at California State University, Hayward, and the past editor of California History, the publication of the California Historical Society.
I warn everyone that at 615 pages, including notes, SUNSET LIMITED is a hefty read. After all, the Southern Pacific Railroad was instrumental in developing the entire West, including land settlement, water, and agriculture in addition to conservation. Behind 35 years of research and writing are no less than 20 major archives, including the un-catalogued corporate records of the railroad itself. I am told those records covered the floor and walls of an entire warehouse. At that point, Dr. Orsi was down on his hands and knees sifting through the records. To be sure, the railroad by then was in decline and not particularly interested in its history, either.
I will cut to the chase with just one sentence on page 376 of his book. “Over the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the Southern Pacific Company compiled a distinguished record of support for wilderness and scenic-land preservation in the American West.” Did everyone get that—a distinguished record? He is not saying a perfect record, or an unblemished one, but yes, it was distinguished. Note just one entry from his index: “parks and wilderness projects: in Lake Tahoe area, 371–73, leadership in, 196, 357–58; railroad’s leadership in, 373–75; redwoods, 196, 373–74, 577n82, Sequoia as, 349, 363–64, 370–71, 374, 576n67. See also recreation areas, wilderness and wilderness preservation; Yosemite National Park.”
Dr. Orsi is not arguing—nor am I—that the railroads of the country were saints. But yes, they did believe in the conservation of parks and wilderness, and yes, took the pulse of the country while doing so. Note another index entry under Muir, John: “railroad’s alliance with, 349, 356, 358, 360.” The Southern Pacific Railroad allying with John Muir and the Sierra Club? Of course. After all, Muir and Edward Harriman—also with controlling interest in the Union Pacific—were fast friends. “Muir’s relationship with Harriman especially demonstrates how far Muir had come since the 1870s toward making peace with the industrial and corporate world. . . . Muir soon came to admire the man and his works, to appreciate Harriman’s devotion to conservation and preservation causes, and to hold him and his family in genuine affection.” (p. 366)
When Muir wanted Yosemite Valley returned to federal control, Harriman made the call to Speaker of the House Joe Cannon. "John Muir certainly deserves credit for having inspired and orchestrated the movement to protect the Yosemite. . . . However, the consistent support of the Southern Pacific over four decades was also important, indeed critical." (p. 369)
If you don’t like Jay Cooke (and perhaps now Edward Harriman), there is also Frederick Billings—and another “missing” academic to tell his story. That book would be Robin W. Winks, FREDERICK BILLINGS: A LIFE: The Story of One of the 19th Century’s Great Railway Builders and Early American Conservationists (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991). The late Dr. Winks, professor of history at Yale University, left us with this account on page 285: “While [Yellowstone] national park may have had its origins around a campfire by the Madison River, where members of the Henry D. Washburn expedition talked into the night of September 19, 1870, it was Jay Cooke and the Northern Pacific Railroad in the person of A. B. Nettleton who most effectively urged Congress to create such a park, and it was Billings as president of the Northern Pacific Railroad who reminded his chief engineer and surveyors, as construction moved up the Yellowstone Valley, that they should try not to damage the values of the land through which they would carry the line, since the time might come when the Northern Pacific would make as much money taking visitors to see the wonders of the West as it would make from the mines hidden in the mountains.”
Again, Dr. Winks is not arguing that Cooke did it all, but he was the one “who most effectively urged Congress to create such a park.” As for the rest of it, “try not to damage the values of the land,” where is the highway engineer heeding that advice today, whether inside or outside the parks?
That makes three of us, Runte, Orsi, and Winks, all saying the exact same thing. Does anyone think we have a conspiracy going, or is it just possible that railroad affection for the national parks really did exist? As for PERC, agreed, the story shouldn’t change just because of the sponsor. Then prove to us where we changed it before rushing to say we were “bought.”
These days, colleges and universities are corporations, too. It starts with the football and/or basketball coach who, among state universities, is the highest paid university official in 49 states out of 50. Our football coach gets $6.5 million and is expected to fill the stadium. "The market," as it were, demands it. NIKE expects something for its logo, too.
And let us not forget all of those university “management teams” now numbering in the thousands. In most major universities, people never in the classroom have grown to outnumber the teaching faculty by a factor of ten to one.
What are young people and their parents paying for with a lifetime of burdensome debt? Bean-counting bureaucrats earning double what a history or classics professor makes. PERC hires only scholars, and yes, invites its most outspoken critics to share the floor.
Well, no one ever said higher education was perfect. If only it were still an education. Peer-review indeed.
Response to Mr Runte Comments on John Lemons's Comments about Railroads and Parks
First, I am no longer interested in pursuing what seemingly is becoming a personal argument with Dr. Runte. But I will stand by my decision, especially after looking at many documents used in case law studies and other laws– the role of railroads was not as Dr. Runte describes. The role of national parks always has been reliance on USC 16 SEC 1–4 as ammended. Further, there is no indication that the county relied to any great extent on what the railroads said, unless said railroads were directly involved in a lawsuit with the National Park Service.
Mr. Runte talks at great length about the purpose of national parks, but he seldom if ever mentions 16 SEC 1–4 as Amended which always has been the defining legislation for national parks, railroads or not with standing.
Mr. Runter wonders where I get the time for reading all of the many resources. Well, I worked with the NPS in Yosemite for 15 years, and my 40 years being a full tenured professor gave me ample time to devote to writing and publishing about park national services. I was not, as Mr. Runte says, hanging around the student union and by implication not doing my work. Maybe he was if he had not had a full time job (did he?)–but I was not.
Sometimes I think Mr. Runte is confusing tourism with resouce protection and natural scenery protection.
Finito
John Lemons
Ah, now I see the problem. Dr. Lemons wants to start the history with the National Park Service. Well, so does the NPS, and hence my article. By the time the NPS came around, the national park idea was well advanced, both legally and culturally, although no historian would deny that the Organic Act was a critical moment.
But how did the nation get to that critical moment and the establishment of the NPS? The railroads; it was what they wanted, themselves further inspired by preservationists fearful of another Hetch Hetchy.
This is not a personal argument, Dr. Lemons. It is rather the pursuit of history. If I have any argument with you, it is your denial of my right to have a sponsor just because you don't approve. You were sponsored by the taxpayers, and yes, I fail to see how they're getting their money's worth as university after university in this country becomes just another football school.
PERC is not sponsoring football. They are rather sponsoring scholarship. It's a wonderful feeling after all these years to be surrounded by people who think. Do they think alike? Not on your life, but yes, they are trying to find solutions to the mess our government has made of the public lands, as well.
See you in the library, and while you're at it, send a nice check to Kurt. The taxpayers aren't sponsoring him, either.
The National Park Service, in partnership with Amtrak, has created the Trails & Rails program in which National Park Service Volunteers provide interpretive programs on select Amtak routes. Reconnecting the national parks to railroads is made possible through this program which reaches a diverse population of Amtrak passengers. The volunteer Trails & Rails guides provide infornation on the cultural and natural history along the route and on Amtrak corridor trains provide public transporation information on getting from Amtrak stations to national, state and local parks. The national parks and passenger trains are once again connected and one can #FindYourPark via Amtrak.
Why use unpaid volunteers? Why not hire professional park interpreters for the cooperative "Trials and Rails" prgram?
On the issue of the "National Park Idea", to what extent have railroads promoted parks, in which the primpary purpose of those parks is resource protection and nature appreciation, as opposed to simply being promoted as tourist destinations? I can agree that railroads were quite important in promoting parks as vacation destinations. I'm less certain of their role in promoting the "National Park Idea" in which resource conservation takes priority over industrial tourism and wreckreation.
Runte himself overlooks some national parks history!
Namely, he doesn't talk about Yosemite, not Yellowstone, really being the first national park, and it being created years before any railroad was near it.