All language subtitles for The National Parks ep2 The Last Refuge

MAN: One of the last jobs
I had in Yellowstone was

delivering the
mail on snowmobile.

There I was in the world's
first national park, and I

remember going down
into Hayden Valley.

There were bison crossing over
the road--2,000-pound mammals

crossing over the road,
and it was so cold.

It was about 60 below zero.

And the bison, as they
breathed, their exhalation

would seem to crystallize in
the air around them, and there

were these sheets, these
ropey stands of crystals kind

of flowing down
from their breath.

And I saw them, and they just
moved their heads and were

looking at me, and I remember
thinking that if I had not

been on that machine, I would
have thought I had been thrust

fully back into the
Pleistocene, back into

the Ice Age.

And I remember just
stopping and turning it off

because the only way you could
hear was to turn that thing

off, and I would turn it off,
and I would listen, and I felt

like this was the first day...

and this morning was the first
time the sun had ever come up

and the shadows that are being
cast right now is the first

time those shadows have
ever been cast on the earth.

And I was all alone, but I
felt I was in the presence

of everything around me
and I was never alone.

It was one of those moments
when you get pulled outside

of yourself into the
environment around you,

and I felt like I was just
with the breath of the bison

as they were exhaling and
I was exhaling and they

were inhaling.

It was all kind of flowing
together, and I forgot

completely about the mail.

All I was thinking of
was that a single moment

in a place as wild as
Yellowstone, and most

of the national parks,
can last forever.

PETER COYOTE: In 1883, a young
politician, the second son

of a prominent New York
City family, became alarmed

about reports that the vast
herds of buffalo that had once

blanketed the Great Plains
were quickly disappearing.

So he hurried west on the
Northern Pacific Railroad

and got off when he reached
the heart of the badlands

in the Dakota territory.

[Train whistle blows]

His name was Theodore
Roosevelt.

He was 24 years old, and he
was afraid the buffalo would

become extinct before he
got the chance to shoot one.

He hired a local guide and
endured days of rough travel

by horseback until he finally
came across a solitary buffalo

bull, killed it, and then
removed its head for shipment

back to New York to be
mounted on his wall.

MAN: Roosevelt loved to kill.

He liked to shoot quadrupeds.

At times he basically said
he didn't trust Americans who

wouldn't hunt, and he hinted
that he didn't believe that

Americans should have
citizenship who weren't

willing to kill a quadruped.

COYOTE: That first trip to the
west, Roosevelt said later,

was an important
turning point for him.

Over the next several years,
he would return again

and again to take more hunting
trips into the mountains,

to ranch on the open plains,
to build up his health

and character by pursuing what
he called "the strenuous life,"

to become, in his own words,
"at heart as much a Westerner

as I am an Easterner."

Roosevelt would never lose his
love of hunting, but in time

he would learn that there were
much bigger and more important

trophies to pursue.

[Roaring]

WOMAN: Our national parks
are an idea, an idea based

on generosity--not just for
our own species, but

for all species.

I think that is profoundly
original in terms of a people

that say, we value
wild nature in place.

We are of this place.

And I think it's our
own declaration of both

independence and
interdependence.

MAN: The great wilds of our
country, once held to be

boundless and inexhaustible,
are being rapidly invaded

and overrun in every
direction, and everything

destructible in them
is being destroyed.

How far destruction may go
is not easy to guess.

Every landscape, low and high,
seems doomed to be trampled

and harried.

John Muir.

COYOTE: As the 19th century
entered its final decade,

Americans began to take
stock of what they had made

of the continent they had
been so busily subduing.

Only 50 years earlier,
the nation's western border

had been the spine of
the Rocky Mountains.

Buffalo numbering in the
tens of millions teemed

on the Great Plains.

Vast forests had never
heard the ring of an ax.

Indian peoples stilled
controlled most of the west.

[Train whistle blowing]

Now the nation stretched
all the way to the Pacific.

Railroads had pushed into
every corner of the country.

Indians had been
systematically dispossessed

from their homelands and
forced onto reservations.

White settlements had sprung
up in so many places that the

director of the census of 1890
announced he could no longer

find an American frontier.

The bountiful land Thomas
Jefferson considered nature's

nation had seemingly
been conquered.

MAN: The moment that Americans
start setting aside these

national parks is also the
moment of sort of the most

explosive exploitation of
so many elements

of the national landscape.

It's the cutting down of
the north woods

at an extraordinary rate.

It's the destruction of the
bison herds, the elimination

of the passenger pigeons.

There is so much being
destroyed in the name

of progress in the United
States in the late 19th

century that the parks are a
kind of reaction against that.

They are saying, if we keep
going the way we're going,

we're going to use it all up,
and some of this is

so beautiful, so essential to
who we are as a people that

we've got to put walls around
these parts and protect them

from ourselves.

COYOTE: By 1890, the United
States has established 4

national parks: Yellowstone,
the world's first; the high

country of Yosemite; and
two groves of big trees

in California--General
Grant and Sequoia.

The army had recently
been placed in charge

of protecting them all.

[Gunshot]

Nonetheless, park wildlife
were still routinely killed.

Cows and sheep still
overgrazed park meadows.

Ancient forests were
still endangered.

And tourists seemed intent
on squandering the treasures

a previous generation
had bequeathed them.

The park idea, not yet
a quarter century old,

still seemed an
uncertain experiment.

The issues of what was
permissible and proper

for people who visited the
parks were still unresolved.

But as a new century was
about to dawn, a handful

of Americans began to question
the headlong rush that had

caused so much devastation
and saw in the national parks

a seed of hope that at least
some pristine places could be

saved before it was too late.

Among them would be the young
assemblyman from New York City

who had gone west on a boyish
impulse but who would mature

into a president whose most
lasting legacy was rescuing

large portions of
America from destruction.

MAN: Surely our people do not
understand even yet the rich

heritage that is theirs.

There can be nothing in the
world more beautiful than

the Yosemite, the groves of
giant sequoias and redwoods,

the canyon of the Yellowstone,
the canyon of the Colorado,

the Three Tetons.

And our people should see to
it that they are preserved

for their children and their
children's children forever

with their majestic
beauty all unmarred.

DIFFERENT MAN: Dear reader,

today I'm in the Yellowstone
Park, and I wish I were dead.

The park is just a howling
wilderness of 3,000 square

miles, full of all imaginable
freaks of a fiery nature.

I have been through the park
in a buggy in the company of

an adventurous old lady from
Chicago and her husband,

who disapproved of the
scenery as being ungodly.

I fancy it scared them.

Rudyard Kipling.

COYOTE: In 1889, Rudyard
Kipling, a young Englishman

and aspiring writer,
was making his first tour

of the United States,
financing the trip by

writing dispatches for
newspapers overseas.

Like many foreigners, Kipling
could not resist stopping

at Yellowstone, a place
already known around the world

as the wonderland.

Most visitors in those days
were well-to-do, able to pay

the $120 train fare across
the continent to the remote

northwestern corner of
Wyoming and then $40 more

for the 5-day stagecoach trip
through the park known as

the grand tour.

The first stop was the hotel
at Mammoth Hot Springs,

where everyone unpacked
quickly and then rushed to buy

souvenirs and post cards
made by the park's resident

photographer, Frank J. Haynes.

Many guests were perfectly
content to view the Mammoth

Springs from the comfort of
the hotel veranda, but some

bought guide books and
hiked up to the terraces

for a closer look.

MAN AS RUDYARD KIPLING:
I found a basin which some

learned hotel keeper has
christened Cleopatra's Pitcher

or Mark Antony's Whiskey Jug
or something equally poetical.

I do not know the
depth of that wonder.

The eye looked down into
an abyss that communicated

directly with the central
fires of the earth.

The ground rings hollow as a
kerosene tin, and someday the

Mammoth Hotel, guests and all,
will sink into the caverns

below and be turned
into a stalactite.

COYOTE: In the morning,
the passengers loaded back

into their assigned carriages
and one by one set off toward

the park's interior, spaced
about every 500 yards to

lessen the effects of dust
that clung in the air, Kipling

wrote, as dense as a fog.

He was bemused by his fellow
tourists, especially the older

woman from Chicago sitting
next to him, who chewed gum

and talked constantly,
pontificating with her husband

on everything they
encountered, especially once

they reached the
first geyser area.

MAN AS RUDYARD KIPLING:
The old lady, regarding the

horrors of the fire holes,
could only say "Good Lord!"

at 30-second intervals.

Her husband talked about the
dreadful waste of steam power.

"And if," continued the old
lady," if we find a thing

"so dreadful as all that steam
and sulfur allowed on the face

"on the earth, mustn't we
believe there is something

"10,000 times
more terrible below,

"prepared for our destruction?"

COYOTE: At noon, they stopped
at a tent hotel, a place

called Larry's, run by
Larry Matthews, a friendly

and loquacious Irishman
known for lavishing special

attention on his
gentille guests.

MAN AS RUDYARD KIPLING: Larry
enveloped us all in the golden

glamour of his speech,
'ere we had descended.

And the tent with the rude
trestle table became a palace,

the rough fare
became delicacies

of Delmonico's, and we,
the abashed recipients

of Larry's imperial bounty.

It was only later that I
discovered that I had paid 8

shillings for tinned beef,
biscuits, and beer.

COYOTE: Like the other
establishments within

the park, Larry's encouraged
tourists to believe that all

the water in Yellowstone
was impregnated with sulfur

and therefore unfit
for drinking.

It was untrue, but it
boosted sales of mineral water

and beer at the inflated
price of 50 cents a bottle

and created roadsides
littered with empties.

When the parade of
stagecoaches reached the lower

geyser basin, the tourists
encamped for two nights

at the Fire Hole Hotel,
or later, the more luxurious

Fountain Hotel, built at a
cost of $100,000 and capable

of handling 350 guests,
complete with electric lights,

steam heat, and hot baths fed
by one of the thermal springs.

The next two days of the grand
tour were devoted exclusively

to visiting the spectacular
array of geysers and thermal

pools and fumaroles,
the largest concentration

of them in the world.

Tourists would peer down
the throat of gaping holes

in the ground, taking their
chances that a geyser was not

about to erupt in their face.

They marveled at the beauty of
translucent pools of turquoise

water, washed pieces of linen
in Handkerchief Pool, which

turned the cloth
white as snow.

MAN AS RUDYARD KIPLING: They
are guarded by soldiers who

patrol with loaded six-shooters
in order that the

tourists may not bring up
fence-rails and sink them

in a pool or chip the fretted
tracery of the formations

with a geological hammer or,
walking where the crust is too

thin, foolishly cook himself.

COYOTE: No visit to
Yellowstone was considered

complete without seeing Old
Faithful go off on schedule.

MAN AS RUDYARD KIPLING: All
the young ladies remarked that

it was elegant and betook
themselves to writing their

names in the bottoms
of shallow pools.

Nature fixes the insult
indelibly, and the after-years

will learn that Hattie, Sadie,
Mamie, Sophie, and so forth

have taken out their hairpins
and scrawled in the face

of Old Faithful.

COYOTE: The last night in the
park was spent at a hotel near

the majestic Grand Canyon
of the Yellowstone.

The view from its edge was
considered the inspirational

grand finale.

Even the cynical Rudyard
Kipling was impressed.

MAN AS RUDYARD KIPLING: All
I can say is that without

warning or preparation,
I looked into a gulf 1,700

feet deep with eagles
and fish hawks circling far

below, and the sides of that
gulf were one wild welter

of color--crimson, emerald,
cobalt, ocher, amber, honey

splashed with port wine,
snow white, vermillion, lemon,

and silver-gray
in wide washes.

So far below that no sound
of its strife could reach us,

the Yellowstone River ran,
a finger-wide strip

of jade green.

Now I know what it is to sit
enthroned amid the clouds

of sunset.

COYOTE: The final day
consisted of a stagecoach ride

back to the start of the tour,
lunch once more at Larry's,

shouting out the names
of their home states

and countries to passing
wagons filled with fresh loads

of tourists heading into the
park, dinner at the hotel

at Mammoth Hot Springs,
then on to the train waiting

at the station to carry them
and their memories away.

MAN AS RUDYARD KIPLING: "And
to think," said the old lady

from Chicago, "that this
showplace has been going

"on all these days, and
none of we ever saw it."

Rudyard Kipling.

MAN: Those first few
years--and maybe this was OK

because there were so few
visitors--but it was

just wide open.

Those early visitors trying to
figure out how best to enjoy

Yellowstone were very quickly
teaching the managers what

wasn't gonna work.

Nobody knew how to act in
a national park.

It hadn't been decided yet.

COYOTE: Having created the
national parks, Congress had

not seen fit to provide some
kind of authority to oversee

them, and in 1886, it even
refused to appropriate any

money whatsoever.

General Phillip Sheridan had
been forced to send the U.S.

Cavalry into Yellowstone
simply to maintain some

semblance of order.

By the 1890s, this
temporary arrangement had

become permanent.

Up to 4 troops of cavalry
were stationed at the newly

constructed Fort Yellowstone
near the Mammoth Hot Springs.

SCHULLERY: I think the odds
are really good that if

the army hadn't been sent in,
Yellowstone wouldn't

have made it.

Writing your name on things
was such a proud tradition

that people would put their
address, too, and the soldiers

could just very simply go
out and write them all down,

head back to the hotel,
and look through the hotel

registers and find these
people and drag them by the

collar back out so they could
spend some time scrubbing

their name off.

COYOTE: The army was expected
to patrol 2 million acres

on horseback, doing their best
to stop poachers and vandals

and campers careless
with their fires.

But the troopers were hampered
by the fact that the federal

park existed in a
legal no man's land.

Usually their only recourse
was a warning, or in the most

serious cases,
expulsion from the park.

Army engineers built and
improved the roads and bridges

that guided travel within the
park to the places tourists

wanted to see, while leaving
major portions of Yellowstone

a roadless and
totally wild expanse.

With the tourists gone,
the cavalrymen found

themselves holed up in
small cabins scattered

around the park, patrolling
for poachers on skis in frigid

temperatures and
lethal snowstorms.

Frederick Remington, when he
visited and traveled with

the soldiers in Yellowstone,
said that they were very fond

of saying that Yellowstone
had 3 seasons: July, August,

and winter, and they hated it.

COYOTE: Men were lost
transporting mail from one

isolated outpost to another.

They died in avalanches.

Some may have been killed
by poachers, who were often

better equipped and more
experienced at maneuvering

through the back
country in deep snow.

MAN: In my last report,
I noted the death of Private

Matthews of Troop B,
6th Cavalry, while on detached

service for the mail.

A most thorough search for
his remains was continued

for almost 6 months
after his disappearance.

His body was found
early in June.

It was evident that he
became lost and while in that

condition became crazed
and perished from the cold.

Captain George Anderson.

COYOTE: The cavalry was also
in charge of the nation's 3

other national parks--General
Grant, Sequoia, and the high

country surrounding Yosemite.

Each spring, troops stationed
at the Presidio in San

Francisco would make the
2-week, 250-mile ride to the

Sierras and patrol the 3 parks
during the summer season.

Some of them were African
Americans, the celebrated

buffalo soldiers of the 9th
and 10th Cavalry who had made

a name for themselves
in the Indian wars.

Their commander was Captain
Charles Young, born into

slavery in Kentucky, whose
father had escaped bondage

during the Civil War to
enlist in the Union Army.

Young followed his father's
example of military service,

becoming the third black man
to graduate from West Point

and the first to be put in
charge of a national park.

JOHNSON: If you're an enlisted
man and then you see

an African American
officer--an officer--

that stays in your mind,

and it also sparks a fire in
your own sense of self-worth,

your own sense of what is
possible in this world,

because you might say to
yourself, "if he could do

"that, maybe I could
do that as well."

So he was a walking
inspiration to the enlisted

men in the 9th
and 10th Cavalry.

COYOTE: As superintendent of
Sequoia, Young directed his

men to complete the
first wagon road into

the Giant Forest.

They accomplished more in
one summer than had been done

in the 3 previous
years combined.

They built the
first trail to Mt. Whitney,

the highest peak in
the west, and erected fences

around the big trees to
prevent vandalism by visitors.

JOHNSON: So the early
parks--Yellowstone, Sequoia,

and Yosemite--you had
to have park protectors

because otherwise, people
would be going into those

areas doing what they've
always done--cutting trees

down, you know, for firewood,
or shooting the game, shooting

the deer to feed their family.

How do you tell someone who's
just trying to keep their

children fed, not hungry,
that it's illegal now to

shoot the game in Yosemite
or in Sequoia National Park?

And that would be a difficult
proposition if you were

a white soldier, but when you
add that overlay of race,

which is no overlay at all,
and you have an African

American, a colored man,
giving orders to people who

are not used to taking orders
from anyone who looks like me,

then you have the beginning
of a very interesting day.

COYOTE: Like their
counterparts at Yellowstone,

the troops in California had
to operate without clear legal

authority and therefore
invented techniques to protect

their parks.

When they collected travelers'
rifles upon entry and only

returned them when the
visitors left, the wildlife

began to come back.

Sheep herders defiantly
bringing their flocks into the

park's alpine meadows had been
openly scornful of the troops,

once they realized that the
army had no power of criminal

arrest and prosecution.

The soldiers then came up
with a creative solution.

JOHNSON: It was
a standard rule.

You find the sheep that are
grazing illegally in the park,

and you move the sheep out
to the eastern boundary

of the park.

You find the sheepherders,
and you move them out the

western boundary of the park.

Now, the park in
those days was 1,500

square miles, so
by the time the sheep

and the sheep herders were
reunited, well, let's just say

the season was done, and if
you have a business and your

business is herding sheep and
that happens to you more than

once or twice, you don't come
back, and I think that was

a pretty effective way of
dealing with illegal grazing

in the park.

MAN AS JOHN MUIR: For many
years, the military have guarded

the great Yellowstone Park,
and now they are guarding

the Yosemite.

They found it a desert as
far as underbrush, grass,

and flowers were concerned,
but in two years, the skin

of the mountains
is healthy again.

Blessings on Uncle
Sam's soldiers.

They have done their job well
and every pine tree is waving

its arm for joy.

COYOTE: No one was more
thankful for the army's

presence than John Muir,
for whom the Sierra Nevada was

the range of light--mountains,
he wrote, "that were throbbing

"and pulsing with the
heartbeats of God."

WOMAN: I think John Muir
understood, as perhaps no one

else has, how essential beauty
is--natural beauty is to us.

Without beauty, we have no,
kind of, lubrication

of the human spirit.

We would just be dead, and
that's really what drove him.

That's what fueled him.

COYOTE: Clambering
ecstatically over

the mountainsides, Muir had
become a self-taught expert

in glaciers, a keen observer
and lover of everything he

encountered, from the tiniest
specks of lichen on a rock to

the mighty sequoias.

And through his magazine
articles, he had emerged as

a wilderness prophet,
a nationally known voice

for preserving the last
remaining vestiges

of America's virgin
forests and unspoiled lands.

MAN AS JOHN MUIR: Mere
destroyers--tree killers,

wool and mutton men,
spreading death and confusion

in the fairest groves and
gardens ever planted.

Let the government hasten
to cast them out and make

an end of them.

Any fool can destroy trees.

They cannot run away.

And if they could, they would
still be destroyed--chased

and hunted down as long as fun
or a dollar could be got out

of their bark hides.

Through all the wonderful,
eventful centuries since

Christ's time and long before
that, God has cared for these

trees, saved them from
drought, disease, avalanches,

and a thousand straining,
leveling tempests and floods,

but he cannot save
them from fools.

Only Uncle Sam can do that.

COYOTE: Yosemite's high
country had been designated

a national park in 1890,
but the valley itself remained

under the control of a
California state commission

and their political
appointees, a group

of "blundering, plundering,
moneymaking vote sellers,"

Muir said.

He wanted it all
transferred back to

the federal government.

Only then, he believed,
would it be safe from ruin.

In 1892, to help promote
Yosemite's protection,

Muir and a small group of
prominent Californians formed

a new organization.

They called it
the Sierra Club.

Muir enthusiastically agreed
to serve as its president,

hoping, he said, that "we
will be able to do something

"for wildness and make
the mountains glad."

[Scattered applause]

MAN: In the 19th century,
when the census bureau would

do its census, it would draw a
line that's the frontier line,

and proudly say it marches
westward, and their definition

of it had this
wonderful phrase.

It would say, in the last
10 years, this many million

of acres have been "redeemed
from wilderness by

"the hand of man."

"Redeemed from wilderness
by the hand of man."

In other words, a virgin forest
is redeemed when it's cut down.

A beautiful mountain stream is
redeemed when the miners are

turned loose in it.

That symbolized what our
view of nature was as we were

rushing across the continent.

That's totally the opposite
of what John Muir would say.

Wilderness isn't
redeemed by man.

Man is redeemed by wilderness.

MAN: To know you are the first
to set foot in homes that have

been deserted for centuries
is a strange feeling.

It is as though unseen eyes
watched, wondering what aliens

were invading their
sanctuaries and why.

The dust of centuries filled
the rooms and rose in thick

clouds at every movement.

AI Wetherill.

COYOTE: A few months before
Rudyard Kipling visited

Yellowstone, cowboys
searching for stray cattle

in southwestern Colorado,
along the edge of a high

plateau known as Mesa Verde,
came upon the ruins

of an ancient city tucked
into the side of a cliff.

Using a tree trunk and their
lariats, they improvised

a ladder and descended
for a closer look.

MAN AS AL WETHERILL: It was
like treading holy ground to

go into those peaceful-looking
homes of a vanished people.

Things were arranged in the
rooms as if people might just

have been out
visiting somewhere.

COYOTE: In quick succession,
they soon came across even

more ruins nestled into the
remote canyon walls of Mesa

Verde and gave
names to them all.

Cliff Palace.

Spruce Tree House.

Balcony House.

It was the largest
concentration ever found

of the cliff dwellings--built,
occupied, and then

mysteriously deserted nearly a
thousand years earlier by

the ancestors of some of the
modern Pueblo Indians

of the southwest.

MAN AS AL WETHERILL: We knew
that if we did not break into

that charmed world, someone
else would sometime--someone

who might not love and respect
those emblems of antiquity

as we did.

COYOTE: The cowboys who
discovered the ruins were the

Wetherills--5 brothers from
a family of Quakers who had

moved to Colorado from
Kansas 8 years earlier.

The oldest was Richard,
who encouraged them all to

spend every free moment
digging among the ruins,

hoping to sell their
discoveries to museums

in big cities.

MAN AS AL WETHERILL: We had
started in as just ordinary

pothunters,

but as work progressed along
that sort of questionable

business, we developed quite a
bit of scientific knowledge by

careful work and comparisons.

COYOTE: One day a stranger
showed up, a young Swedish

nobleman with an interest
in archaeology--

Gustaf Nordenskiold.

When the Wetherills showed
him the ruins, his enthusiasm,

one of the brothers
remembered, increased almost

beyond his control.

For two months, from sunup to
sundown, he kept the Wetherill

brothers busy, teaching them
more scientific methods.

He showed them how to use
a mason's trowel instead

of a spade, digging slowly and
carefully to reveal a relic

without damaging it.

He insisted on labeling and
photographing everything

and often saved items that
no other archaeologist

of the time would have kept--
wood ash from fire pits,

dust and trash from the
floors, even dried pieces

of human excrement that one
day might help determine what

the ancient Puebloans had
been eating so long ago.

In all,
he amassed hundreds of items

which he intended to
ship home to Sweden.

But when his pack animals,
loaded down with artifacts,

reached the railway station
in Durango, Nordenskiold was

immediately arrested.

MAN: The basic problem was,

this foreigner is stealing our

relics, our bowls, our pots,

and we're not gonna allow that.

It's all right for we
Americans to steal them,

but it's not all right for
those foreigners to do it.

Gustaf's lawyer asked the
judge, under what law are we

arresting him?

And there was no law.

There was no law at all,
so they couldn't stop him.

They couldn't stop anybody,
and that probably sparked some

interest--why
isn't there a law?

COYOTE: Nordenskiold was
released and got to take his

huge shipment home to
Scandinavia, where he

published the first scientific
study of the cliff dwellers.

But the controversy had
brought worldwide attention to

Mesa Verde and to the fact
that its treasures were

completely unprotected.

MAN: We have seen the Indian
and the game retreat before

the white man and the
cattle and beheld the tide

of immigration move forward
which threatens before long to

leave no portion of our vast
territory unbroken by the

farmer's plow or untrodden
by his flocks.

There is one spot left--a
single rock about which this

tide will break and past which
it will sweep, leaving it

undefiled by the unsightly
traces of civilization.

Here in this Yellowstone Park,
the large game of the west may

be preserved from
extermination in this,

their last refuge.

George Bird Grinnell.

COYOTE: By the 1890s,
few Americans understood as

keenly as George Bird
Grinnell, the editor and owner

of "Forest and Stream"
magazine, how fearful

the price had been for the
nation's relentless expansion

across the continent.

Raised on the estate of the
famous painter and naturalist

John James Audubon at the
north end of Manhattan,

Grinnell could remember
spotting a bald eagle from his

bedroom window and watching
immense flocks of passenger

pigeons darkening the sky from
horizon to horizon as they

passed overhead.

Traveling across Kansas,
he had once encountered

a buffalo herd so vast that
his train was forced to stop

for 3 hours while the
beasts crossed the tracks.

He had hunted elk in Nebraska
when elk could still be found

on the plains, ridden with
the Pawnees in a great buffalo

chase as the Indians brought
down their prey with bows

and arrows.

Now all that and so much
more suddenly seemed gone or

on the verge of disappearing.

Passenger pigeons had been
so systematically killed that

a bird once numbering in the
hundreds of millions had been

reduced to a handful, and soon
the death of a solitary bird

in a Cincinnati zoo would
bring an end to

the species' existence.

The hide-hunters had been
equally effective

with the buffalo.

By the mid-1880s, the last of
the great free-roaming herds

had been slaughtered.

Now the only wild herd left in
the country was in Yellowstone

National Park, estimated at
only a few hundred animals.

MAN AS GEORGE BIRD GRINNELL:
For 4 centuries, we have been

killing and marketing game,
destroying it as rapidly

and as thoroughly as we knew
how, and making no provision

toward replacing the supply.

We are just beginning to
ask one another how we may

preserve the little that
remains for ourselves

and our children.

COYOTE: Grinnell regularly
used the pages of "Forest

and Stream" to try to point
Americans in a new direction.

It wasn't that he
was against hunting.

In fact, he loved to hunt.

Grinnell just feared that
without wise management,

there would be nothing
left for hunters to shoot.

He proposed the creation of
a new organization aimed

at stopping the heedless
killing of wild birds,

"in honor," Grinnell wrote,
"of the man who did more to

"teach Americans about birds of
their own land than any other

"who ever lived."

He named the group
The Audubon Society.

And when Grinnell published
a mildly critical review

of Theodore Roosevelt's book
chronicling his own western

adventures, the young author
burst into Grinnell's office

to confront him.

The two men turned the awkward
moment into the beginning

of a lasting friendship and
together formed the Boone

and Crockett Club to promote
what they called "the manly

"sport of hunting."

DUNCAN: But Grinnell had
other, larger issues in mind

that he wanted to steer Teddy
Roosevelt toward, and I think

over time he became something
of a mentor to Roosevelt,

of taking this energetic guy,
this guy who was a political

star, a rising political star,
and gradually pointing him

in directions that were
clearly in Roosevelt's heart

but needed that little tilt
from George Bird Grinnell to

bring them to fruition.

COYOTE: As president of the
new club, Theodore Roosevelt

was increasingly drawn into
Grinnell's battles, including

the longstanding crusade to
keep Yellowstone as pristine

as possible.

It was a constant fight.

There were repeated attempts
in Congress to reduce

the park's size or open it up
to greater

commercial exploitation.

Roosevelt helped
defeat them all.

But despite those successes,
there was still no federal law

giving Yellowstone's
caretakers clear authority to

protect its wildlife,
including its dwindling herd

of wild buffalo.

On March 13, 1894,
two troopers out

on patrol in Yellowstone
heard shots in the distance

and hurried in that direction.

[Gunshot]

Soon they came across
several buffalo carcasses.

A man was hunched over one of
them, so busily skinning it

that he didn't realize the
troopers were there until one

of them was beside him
with a drawn gun.

The poacher was Edgar Howell,
and he had been methodically

killing as many buffalos as
he could, planning to haul out

their heads for sale to
a Montana taxidermist.

As luck would have it,
a reporter named Emerson Hough

on assignment for "Forest and
Stream," was also in the park

with a photographer to do an
article about Yellowstone

in the winter.

When the poacher bragged that
the worst punishment he could

receive for his crime was
expulsion from the park

and the loss of only 26
dollars' worth of equipment,

Hough realized he had stumbled
onto a great story and quickly

telegraphed it to Grinnell
in New York City.

Grinnell knew just what
to do with it.

SCHULLERY: Grinnell just
pulled out all the stops.

He ran the story in
"Forest and Stream."

He was in contact with
everybody he knew who might be

able to wake up, you know,
the sleeping giant,

the American public, and
make them care about this,

and he succeeded.

COYOTE: Within a week,
legislation was working its

way through Congress,
authorizing regulations that

would finally protect the
park, its geysers,

and its wildlife.

On May 7, 1894, less than two
months after Howell's capture,

President Grover Cleveland
signed the bill into law.

[Birds chirping]

SCHULLERY: George Bird
Grinnell and Theodore Roosevelt

and the other defenders of
Yellowstone were thinking

in ecosystem terms before
anybody was using the term.

They saw places like
Yellowstone as reservoirs.

They used the
term "reservoir."

It was a reservoir
for wildlife.

I think if the opportunity
presented by the capture

of Howell had been missed,
we would have lost the bison.

They were so close to gone.

MAN: Gentlemen, why in
heaven's name this haste?

You have time enough.

Why sacrifice the present to
the future, fancying that you

will be happier when your
fields teem with wealth

and your cities with people?

In Europe, we have cities
wealthier and more populous

than yours, and we
are not happy.

You dream of your posterity,
but your posterity will look

back to yours as the golden
age and envy those who first

burst into this silent,
splendid nature, who first

lifted up their axes upon
these tall trees and lined

these waters with
busy wharves.

Why, then, seek to complete,
in a few decades, what took

the other nations of the
world thousands of years?

Why, in your hurry to subdue
and utilize nature, squander

her splendid gifts?

You have opportunity such as
mankind has never had before

and may never have again.

Lord James Bryce.

MAN: The first duty of the
human race is to control

the earth it lives upon.

The first principle of
conservation is development,

the use of natural resources
now existing on this continent

for the benefit of the
people who live here now.

Gifford Pinchot.

COYOTE: Gifford Pinchot was
a graduate of Yale who had

studied forestry in Germany
and France and returned as

the first American to
declare himself

a professional forester.

He and John Muir had met in
1896 and in the beginning

enjoyed each other's company,
camping together on the rim

of the Grand Canyon.

But while the two men agreed
that America's forests were

being rapaciously destroyed,
they ultimately parted company

on the solution.

Muir considered
forests sacred.

He wanted them treated as
parks with logging, grazing,

and hunting prohibited.

Pinchot didn't agree.

He wanted forests protected,
too, but he believed the best

way to do it was to manage
their use, not leave them alone.

His favorite saying was
"the greatest good

"for the greatest number."

MAN AS JOHN MUIR: Much is
said on questions of this kind

about the greatest good
for the greatest number,

but the greatest number is too
often found to be number one.

It is never the greatest
number in the common meaning

of the term that makes the
greatest noise and stir

on questions mixed with money.

Complaints are made in
the name of poor settlers

and miners, while the wealthy
corporations are kept

carefully hidden
in the background.

Let right, commendable
industry be fostered, but as

to these Goths and Vandals
of the wilderness who are

spreading black death in the
fairest woods God ever made,

let the government
up and at 'em.

CRONON: We often tell
stories about the origins

of the American conservation
movement by setting John Muir

and Gifford Pinchot in
counterpoint with each other.

Often in those stories,
John Muir is the hero

and Gifford Pinchot
is the villain.

In fact, they represent,
I think, two sides of one coin.

Muir is the figure who
celebrates the sacred

in nature--the wildness,
the otherness of nature,

that which we need to protect
if we are not to contaminate

things that are nonhuman
with our own human agendas.

Pinchot, on the other hand,
is about a conservation that

celebrates sustainability.

It's about keeping the
roots of our material lives

in the natural world in such
a way that we don't destroy

nature as we use nature
for our own livelihood.

COYOTE: Congress and the
administration of President

Grover Cleveland sided with
Pinchot, who was appointed

the nation's chief forester.

National forests would
become part of the Department

of Agriculture, used and
managed like a crop,

not preserved like a temple.

But if Muir could not prevail
on the future of all national

forests, he tried to salvage
at least a partial victory by

protecting one forest as
a national park.

It was in western
Washington state within sight

of the cities of Seattle and
Tacoma, the ancient homeland

of nearly a dozen Indian
tribes, including the Cowlitz,

Nisqually, Puyallup,
and Yakima, who called it

Tahoma, the big mountain
where the waters begin.

White settlers called
it Mount Rainier.

MAN AS JOHN MUIR: Altogether,
this is the richest subalpine

garden I ever found,
a perfect floral elysium.

The icy dome needs not a man's
care, but unless the reserve

is guarded, the flower
bloom will soon be killed,

and nothing of the forest
will be left but black

stump monuments.

COYOTE: A broad coalition,
including the Sierra Club,

the National Geographic
Society, and the Northern

Pacific Railroad, worked hard
with Muir for more than 5

years, and on March 2, 1899,
Mount Rainier became the

nation's fifth national park.

MAN: When on the streets I
meet young girls and matrons

with their kindly faces
and see the egrets in their

bonnets and hats, I cannot
help feeling that these

daughters of Eve do not
know how these feathers

were obtained.

These plumes only grow while
the bird is rearing its young,

and I believe that if most of
the women who wear them knew

they were obtained by shooting
the mother on her nest,

they would be ashamed to
keep them, even in secret,

much less to display them
on the public streets.

John F. Lacey.

COYOTE: For centuries,
the nation's greatest breeding

ground for its most beautiful
plumed birds was southern

Florida, where the fresh
waters of Lake Okeechobee

drained slowly toward the Gulf
of Mexico, through cypress

swamps and mangrove forests
and the biggest saw grass marsh

in the world, the Everglades.

But by 1900, the long plumes
of the great white and snowy

egrets had become more
valuable per ounce than gold,

and nearly 95% of Florida's
shorebirds had been killed by

plume hunters.

More than 5 million birds a
year were perishing to satisfy

the demand of the latest
fashion trend--using bird

feathers to
decorate women's hats.

Strolling the streets of New
York for part of an afternoon,

one ornithologist counted 542
feathered hats, representing

40 different species.

Some hats included an
entire stuffed bird.

MAN AS GEORGE BIRD GRINNELL:
Fashion decrees feathers,

and feathers it is.

This condition of affairs must
be something of a shock to

the leaders of the Audubon
Society, who were sanguine

enough to believe that the
moral idea represented by

their movement would be enough
to influence society at large.

George Bird Grinnell.

COYOTE: The Audubon Society
had done its best to try to

persuade women not to buy such
hats, even promoted the sale

of featherless hats called
Audubonetts decorated

with ribbons.

It didn't work, and the
millenary industry, based

principally in New York City,
used its influence in Congress

to defeat a series of national
laws aimed at stopping

the slaughter.

Then an unlikely
champion stepped forward.

MAN AS JOHN F. LACEY:
We have a wireless telegraph,

a thornless cactus,

a seedless orange, and
a core less apple.

Let us now have
a bird less hat.

John F. Lacey.

COYOTE: As the Republican
party began fracturing

at the start of the 20th
century into a progressive

wing and a group of die-hard
conservatives known as

Stand-Pat Republicans,
Representative John F. Lacey

of Oskaloosa, Iowa,
counted himself with those

opposed to change.

But when it came to defending
wildlife or saving America's

remaining unspoiled lands,
Lacey's definition

of conservative placed him not
only outside his fellow

Stand-Patters but
in the vanguard of even

the most progressive
politicians of the day.

MAN AS JOHN F. LACEY: The first
settlers found this continent

a storehouse of energy and
national wealth, but we have

not been content with
using these resources.

We have wasted them
as reckless prodigals.

For more than 300 years,
destruction was

called improvement.

Mankind must conserve the
resources of nature, or the

world will, at no distant day,
become as barren as

a sucked orange.

COYOTE: It had been Lacey,
working with George Bird

Grinnell and Theodore
Roosevelt, who pushed through

the bill that finally gave
government officials the tools

they needed to protect
America's last wild buffalo

herd in Yellowstone.

Now, after years of ceaseless
effort, he won passage

of another landmark, the Lacey
Bird and Game Act of 1900.

Soon, government agents were
confiscating huge shipments

of bird skins and feathers.

But the Lacey Act did not
put an end to plume hunting

entirely, especially in
the lawless Everglades.

5 years after the bill's
passage, a game warden was

murdered by poachers.

3 years after that,
another one was gunned down.

Some people began thinking
that the uniquely abundant

array of wildlife in southern
Florida would never be safe

unless the Everglades
itself was set aside, like

Yellowstone, as
a national park.

MAN AS JOHN F. LACEY: The
attempt to preserve and restore

some of the wildlife of America

is no longer looked upon
as a fad or idle sentiment.

We have given an awful
exhibition of slaughter

and destruction which may
serve as a warning to

all mankind.

Let us now give an example
of wise conservation of what

remains of the
gifts of nature.

Remains of the
gifts of nature.

COYOTE: As America moved into
a new century, a new word--

conservation--had crept into
the nation's vocabulary.

Now a new president would
turn the word into a movement.

MAN: Like all Americans,
I like big things--big

prairies, big forests and
mountains, big wheat fields,

rail roads, and herds
of cattle, too.

Big factories, steamboats,
and everything else.

CRONON: I think it's hard to
exaggerate the significance

of Theodore Roosevelt
in the history

of American conservation.

He creates a presidency when
he arrives in the White House

that sets in motion most of
the conservation agendas that

will define the first half
of the 20th century.

MAN: The key to Teddy
Roosevelt's leadership was his

passion, his audacity,
the fact that he was

an inspiring public speaker
and enjoyed leading the country.

He was a person who turned
the country in a different

direction where conservation
was concerned.

COYOTE: In the spring of 1903,
Theodore Roosevelt once again

boarded a train headed west,
and on April 8, he stepped off

at the Northern Pacific
rail road terminal just outside

of Yellowstone National Park.

He was no longer the scrawny
and inexperienced Easterner

cowboys had laughed at
and called "four-eyes"

20 years earlier.

He was a national hero,

the leader of the Rough Riders
in the war with Spain,

a former governor
of New York state,

President William McKinley's
running mate in 1900,

and now, following McKinley's
assassination in 1901,

the youngest president
in United States history.

MAN: The president
unites in himself

powers and qualities
that rarely go together...

the qualities of a man of action

with those of a scholar
and writer...

the instincts
and accomplishments

of the best breeding and culture

with the broadest
democratic sympathies.

He is doubtless the most
vital man on the continent,

if not on the planet, today.

John Burroughs.

COYOTE: Not since Thomas
Jefferson a century earlier

had there been
an American president

with greater interest
in the natural world.

JENKINSON: Roosevelt began
his life as a naturalist.

He formed Theodore Roosevelt's
Natural History Museum

as a child, and he was
a taxidermist.

He would find snakes and mice
and other creatures

and sometimes store them
in the refrigerator,

the icebox of his family.

Several maids quit over this.

The house smelled of taxidermy.
He had formaldehyde everywhere.

This was a young boy
who was fascinated by

the idea of the museum
and nature,

but all of this is preliminary.

It wasn't until he went
out to Dakota in 1883

that Roosevelt really
started to understand

what was at stake in the debate

about the future of nature
in this country.

COYOTE: "When I hear about
the destruction of a species,"

he said, "I feel
just as if the works

"of some great writer
had perished."

JENKINSON: I think it can
be said that Roosevelt invented

the national wildlife
refuge system.

This was done
by executive order alone.

A national park
needs to be voted on

by a majority
in two houses of Congress.

Roosevelt said to his
attorney general Philander Knox,

"ls there anything
that would prevent me

"from naming Pelican Island
on the Indian River in Florida

"a national bird sanctuary?"

and Knox, the Attorney General,
said, "No, nothing."

And so Roosevelt said,
"I do declare it."

COYOTE: When Roosevelt
arrived in Yellowstone,

he was in the middle
of a national tour

unprecedented in its ambition.

14,000 grueling miles.

25 states.
150 towns and cities.

More than 200 speeches
in the space of 8 weeks.

From the day he left Washington,

he had been looking forward
to some time off in Yellowstone,

and immediately
upon his arrival,

he set off on horseback
with the Army's

acting park superintendent
as his host,

leaving the rest
of the presidential

entourage behind,

including his staff,
his Secret Service men,

his physician, and all
the reporters covering the trip.

"As far as the world at large
is concerned,"

his private secretary
told the press,

"The president will be lost."

Only John Burroughs,
the popular nature writer,

was allowed to come along.

The summer tourist season
was still two months away,

so Roosevelt had Yellowstone
essentially to himself.

He loved every minute of it.

He delighted in seeing
so many animals--

herds of mule deer
and whitetails

and pronghorn antelope,
flocks of bighorn sheep.

He watched an eagle swoop down

to try to capture
a yearling elk,

saw cougars feasting
on the carcasses of their prey,

spent 4 hours one afternoon

looking through
his field glasses,

trying to count all the elk
within sight,

ultimately estimating them
to number 3,000.

On Easter morning, the President
of the United States

insisted on leaving the campsite
entirely on his own.

He tramped 18 miles
over rough ground

in order to sneak up
to within 50 yards

of another elk herd,

sat down on a rock, and gazed
rapturously upon them

while he ate his lunch
of hardtack and sardines.

One morning,
President Roosevelt was shaving,

and he had lathered up his face
with shaving cream,

and he was shaving himself
in the wilderness

with a little mirror,

when somebody came in and said,

"There are bighorn sheep
out there

"and they're
coming down this cliff."

So, Roosevelt said, "By Godfrey,
I have to see that,"

and he jumps up with
half of his face clean-shaven

and the other half
full of lather

and runs out into nature to see

the bighorn sheep coming down
this nearly sheer cliff.

And Burroughs said, "What kind
of president is this?"

He's just an overgrown boy who's
so enthusiastic about nature

that it infects
everyone around him

with a new enthusiasm
for the natural world.

COYOTE: Roosevelt
was witnessing firsthand

the results of the wildlife
protection bill

he and George Bird Grinnell
and Congressman John Lacey

had worked so hard to pass.

The game animals were now
much more numerous,

he assured Burroughs,

than when he had last visited
the park 12 years earlier.

Still, the president was itching
to shoot something.

SCHULLERY: Roosevelt will always
baffle people who don't hunt

because he both loved animals
and loved hunting them,

and in Yellowstone,
what he really wanted to do

was shoot a mountain lion.

At the time, park managers
were killing predators.

It was something
that was going on anyway.

And so to Roosevelt's mind,
"Well, why not me?"

COYOTE: The president's
advisers thought

killing any animal
in a national park

would be bad politics

and quietly dissuaded him.

In all, Roosevelt spent
two weeks in Yellowstone,

including several days traveling
in a horse-drawn sleigh

to the park's interior,

still covered in some places
by up to 6 feet of snow.

He saw the Norris geyser basin
and Old Faithful

and skied to the rim
of the Grand Canyon

of the Yellowstone.

But these wonders held
only passing interest to him

compared to the park's wildlife.

In addition
to the larger animals,

he recorded sightings
of pine squirrels

and snowshoe hares

and scores of different birds,

including a pygmy owl,
the first he had ever seen.

"He responded with boyish glee,"
Burroughs wrote.

"I think the president
was as pleased

"as if we had bagged
some big game."

At one point,
Roosevelt sees a mouse

that he thinks
is new to science,

so he jumps off the sleigh
and grabs it with his hand

and kills it and then stuffs it.

MAN AS JOHN BURROUGHS:
While we all went fishing

in the afternoon,
the president skinned his mouse

and prepared the pelt
for Washington.

It was done as neatly
as a professed taxidermist

would have done it.

This was the only game
the president killed

in the park.

John Burroughs.

COYOTE: On April 24, at the end
of Roosevelt's visit,

the entire population of
the town of Gardiner, Montana,

gathered at the park's
north entrance

for a special ceremony.

A new arch to welcome visitors
to Yellowstone

was under construction,

and the president
had agreed to speak

at the laying
of the arch's cornerstone.

For the occasion,
Roosevelt reluctantly

changed out of his
camping clothes,

put on a business suit,

and rode through town
to the awaiting crowd.

He watched as the cornerstone
was carefully put into place,

then climbed to a rough platform

on the stonework
of the incomplete pillar

and began to speak.

MAN AS THEODORE ROOSEVELT:
The Yellowstone Park

is something absolutely unique
in the world,

so far as I know.

This park was created
and is now administered

for the benefit and enjoyment
of the people.

The scheme of its preservation

is noteworthy in its
essential democracy.

The only way that
the people as a whole

can secure to themselves
and their children

the enjoyment in perpetuity

of what the Yellowstone park
has to give

is by assuming ownership
in the name of the nation

and jealously safeguarding
and preserving

the scenery, the forests,
and the wild creatures.

JENKINSON: Roosevelt argued
that the parks

are a democratic experience.

That was his essential argument
about the national parks,

that the rich people
always have their playgrounds,

they know how
to amuse themselves,

and that America
as a classless society

or at least a society
that would like to be classless

needs to have places where
regular human beings can go

and stand side by side
with the rich and privileged

and enjoy the same experience

and not be made to feel
that they are somehow less.

And so his primary argument
was that the national parks

are a democratic experiment
in nature.

COYOTE: Before he got
back on the train

to resume his trip,

Roosevelt also
deliberately quoted

from the act of Congress
that had made Yellowstone

the world's first
national park--

"for the benefit and enjoyment
of the people."

Later, when the arch
was finally completed,

that phrase would be permanently
carved into its mantle

so that everyone
who entered Yellowstone

would be reminded of why
the park was there

and for whom.

JOHNSON: I remember the first
time I arrived in Yellowstone,

I got off the bus right outside
the north entrance,

where there's that wonderful
stone arch that says

"For the benefit and enjoyment
of the people."

It doesn't say,
"For the benefit and enjoyment

"of some of the people,
or a few of the people."

It says, "All of the people,"

and for me,
that meant democracy,

and for me,
that meant I was welcome,

and I stepped outside,
and as I was

stepping down onto the ground,

there was bison, a 2,000-pound
animal walking by,

and there was
no one else around.

The bison was just strolling by.

And I looked up at the driver
and I said,

"Does this happen all the time?"

and he looked at me and said,
"All the time."

And I said to myself,
"I've arrived,"

and I can't imagine being
in any other place,

and to be honest with you,
once I stepped off that bus,

I never got back on.

[Whistle blows]

[Whistle blows]

COYOTE: Two weeks
after leaving Yellowstone,

Roosevelt's whirlwind tour
brought him

to Arizona's Grand Canyon

for a brief stop on the way

from New Mexico
to southern California.

Roosevelt had never before seen
the Grand Canyon,

and he was overwhelmed by
the vista from the south rim.

He longed to spend
more time there,

but his schedule permitted
only this quick visit

and a few remarks to the crowd
that had gathered to greet him.

MAN AS THEODORE ROOSEVELT: I
want to ask you to do one thing

in connection with it

in your own interest and in
the interest of the country.

Keep this great wonder of nature
as it now is.

Leave it as it is.
You cannot improve it.

The ages have been at work on it
and man can only mar it.

What you can do is to keep it
for your children,

your children's children,
and for all who come after you

as one of the great sights
which every American,

if he can travel at all,
should see.

JENKINSON: The great statement
in this speech is

"Leave it as it is.

"The ages have been
at work on it

"and man can only mar it."

Nothing has ever been said
about the national parks

as fine as that.

The idea for Roosevelt
was that humans have an itch

to change things...

but the beauty
of the Grand Canyon

is when you look at it
and you see nothing

that humans have constructed.

It's a magnificent thing
that he said,

and if that were the one
wilderness statement

of American life,

I believe
it's greater than Thoreau.

I believe that it's
greater than John Muir.

"Leave it as it is.
The ages have been at work on it

"and man can only mar it"

should be the motto in front
of every national park

in the country.

And if you think
that this was said

by a man on a 14,000-mile trip
in which he gave 262 speeches

more or less
off the top of his head

on seeing the Grand Canyon
for the first time,

you realize what
presidential greatness can be.

COYOTE: Then Roosevelt
was gone...

and by the next day, he was

whistle-stopping his way
through California,

giving 2 to 3 speeches a day,

attending banquets and dinners
in his honor,

presiding at dedications
and groundbreakings,

setting the frenetic pace
that had become his hallmark.

[Bird cawing]

MAN AS JOHN MUIR:
Nothing can be done well

at a speed of 40 miles a day.

Far more time should be taken.

Walk away quietly
in any direction

and taste the freedom
of the mountaineer.

Climb the mountains
and get their good tidings.

Nature's peace
will flow into you

as sunshine flows into trees.

The winds will blow their own
freshness into you

and the storms their energy

while cares will drop off
like autumn leaves.

COYOTE: By 1903,
John Muir was 65

and more famous than ever.

Mountain peaks and canyons,
campsites and glaciers

now bore his name.

Magazine editors besieged him
with requests for articles.

The Sierra Club he had founded
was growing steadily,

and the hikes he personally led
into the mountains

were always the club's
most heavily attended.

People loved to hear him preach
his deeply held gospel

that salvation could be found
through immersion

in the natural world.

WOMAN: John Muir was there,

mounted on the horse
which he rode now and then,

when no woman would accept
the loan of it.

He was rapt, entranced.

He threw up his arms
in a grand gesture.

"This is the morning
of creation," he cried.

"The whole thing
is beginning now."

"The mountains
are singing together."

Harriet Monroe.

COYOTE: For nearly a decade now,

he had been struggling to have
the Yosemite Valley

given back to
the federal government

and made part of the larger
Yosemite National Park.

But nothing he seemed
to say or do

had proven successful.

Things remained at a standstill
in the spring of 1903,

as Muir prepared to leave his
home in Martinez, California,

and embark on a trip to Europe
and Asia with some friends.

Suddenly, his plans changed.

MAN AS JOHN MUIR: An influential
man from Washington

wants to make a trip
into the Sierra with me,

and I might be able to do some
forest good,

in freely talking
around the campfire.

COYOTE: It was the president,

still working his way up
through California,

asking Muir to accompany him
during a visit to Yosemite.

"I do not want
anyone with me but you,"

Roosevelt had written.

"I want to drop
politics absolutely

"and just be out in the open
with you."

Muir realized this was
the opportunity of a lifetime.

He purchased a brand-new
woolen suit for the occasion

and hurried to join
the presidential entourage.

On May 15, they set off for
the Mariposa Grove of big trees

in a flurry of activity.

A long caravan of wagons filled
with staff and dignitaries,

a detachment
of 30 buffalo soldiers

riding along as escorts.

Muir soon found himself seated
in the president's coach

along with the governor
of California,

the Secretary of the Navy,
the Surgeon General,

two college presidents,

and Roosevelt's
personal secretary.

It was hardly the trip
he had been promised,

but Muir tried his best
to squeeze in words

to the president and governor

about the issue of making
all of Yosemite a national park.

In the grove of mighty sequoias,

the president's group paused,
as all tourists did,

for a snapshot at the famous
Wawona tunnel tree,

and later, they posed
for an official photograph,

lined up along the base
of the Grizzly Giant,

the oldest and most famous
sequoia in Yosemite,

estimated to be 2,700 years old

and boasting a single branch
that was 6 1/2 feet in diameter.

Then the troops, the phalanx
of reporters and photographers,

and virtually all
of the official party

headed back to the Wawona Hotel,

where a series of receptions
and a grand dinner

were scheduled
in the president's honor

that evening.

None of them knew that Roosevelt
had no intention of attending.

Instead, he remained behind
with only John Muir

and a few park employees,

who started preparing a camp

at the base
of one of the sequoias,

part of a secret plan
Roosevelt had hatched

to allow him time
alone with the trees

and the man who
considered them sacred.

They built a fire
and sat around it,

eating a simple supper, talking
as twilight enveloped them,

getting to know one another
in the glow of the blaze.

MAN AS THEODORE ROOSEVELT:
The night was clear,

and in the darkening aisles
of the great sequoia grove,

the majestic trunks,
beautiful in color and symmetry,

rose around us like the pillars
of a mightier cathedral

than ever was conceived even by
the fervor of the Middle Ages.

Hermit thrushes sang beautifully
in the evening.

JENKINSON I And Muir said,

"I fell in love with this
Theodore Roosevelt."

I mean, he actually
used those words.

"You can't resist this man.
I fell in love with him."

Roosevelt, interestingly enough,

came back and complained
a little bit about Muir

and said, "He doesn't know
his bird songs."

Roosevelt's an ornithologist.

He knows everything there is
to know about birds.

But Muir also got one off
on Roosevelt.

He said to him, "Mr. President,

"when are you going to get over
this infantile need you have

"to kill animals?"

Roosevelt would not have taken
that from any other human being.

MAN AS JOHN MUIR: I had a
perfectly glorious time

with the president
and the mountains.

I never before
had a more interesting,

hearty, and manly companion.

I stuffed him pretty well
regarding the timber thieves

and other spoilers
of the forest.

COYOTE: Long after sundown,

with no tent and only
a pile of army blankets,

the two men finally
went to sleep.

[Owl hooting]

[Horse whinnying]

COYOTE: The next morning
at 6:30,

they saddled up for the long
ride to Yosemite Valley,

with the guide under
strict orders from the president

to avoid at all costs
the Wawona Hotel

and the delegation of officials
he had jilted the night before.

In the high country
near Glacier Point,

with its spectacular panorama
of the valley

and its waterfalls
arrayed at their feet,

they stopped and once more
made camp

at a spot their guide--
Charlie Leidig--had picked out.

MAN AS CHARLIE LEIDIG: Around
the campfire, Roosevelt and Muir

talked far into the night
regarding Muir's glacial theory

of the formation
of Yosemite Valley.

They also talked a great deal

about the protection
of forests in general

and Yosemite in particular.

I heard them discussing
the setting aside

of other areas in the United
States for park purposes.

There was some difficulty
in their campfire conversation

because both men wanted
to do the talking.

COYOTE: They awoke
the next morning,

covered by a light snow that
had fallen in the high country

during the night.

Rather than
feeling inconvenienced,

the president couldn't
have been more delighted.

"We slept in a snowstorm
last night,"

he exclaimed to the crowds

that had been patiently waiting
for him on the valley floor.

"This," he said, "has been
the grandest day of my life."

After camping one more night
alone with Muir,

the president was
picked up and escorted

back to the train station
for the resumption

of his cross-country tour.

And when he spoke at
the state capital in Sacramento

a day later,

Roosevelt's words sounded
as if they could have come

from the lips of John Muir.

MAN AS THEODORE ROOSEVELT:
Lying out at night under those

sequoias was lying in a temple
built by no hand of man.

A temple grander than
any human architect

could by any possibility build,

and I hope for the preservation
of the groves of giant trees

simply because it would be
a shame to our civilization

to let them disappear.

They are monuments
in themselves.

I want them preserved.

We are not building
this country of ours for a day.

It is to last through the ages.

COYOTE: Within 3 years,
the California legislature

and United States Congress

approved the transfer
of the Yosemite Valley

and Mariposa big trees

back to the federal government.

MAN AS JOHN MUIR: I am now
an experienced lobbyist.

My political education
is complete.

Have attended the legislature,

made speeches,
explained, exhorted,

persuaded every mother's son
of the legislators,

newspaper reporters,
and everybody else

who would listen to me.

And now that
the fight is finished

and my education as a politician
and lobbyist is finished,

I am almost finished myself.

COYOTE: Yosemite National Park

now encompassed
almost everything

Muir had been fighting for.

"Sound the timbrel,"
he wrote a friend,

"and let every Yosemite
tree and stream rejoice."

JOHNSON: I remember one
day I was walking

in the Cook's Meadow,

which is the meadow in the
central part of Yosemite Valley,

and there was a woman there,

and she was just looking
up and around her

and she just kept saying,
"Oh. Oh, my.

"Oh, my."

I looked at her, I said,
"Ma'am, are you all right?"

She said, "Yes, I'm just fine.
I just--oh."

I didn't have to talk
to her about

the transcendent experience.

She was having one, and it
wasn't a transcendent experience

because it was a national park.

It was transcendent because
it was Yosemite Valley.

But because it had become
a national park,

she could have
that transcendent experience.

And that's commonplace
in Yosemite.

And where else can you get
an experience like that?

[Bird cawing]

WOMAN: In other parts
of the world,

there are certain areas
that are preserved

because some rich nobleman
out of the goodness of his heart

decided to decree it.

But in the United States,
you don't have to be

dependent on some rich guy
being generous to you.

To me that's what
national parks mean.

It's a symbol of democracy,
democracy when it works well.

At its best.

COYOTE: Back in 1870,

a 15-year-old boy in Kansas
was idly reading the newspaper

that had been used
to wrap his lunch.

He came across an article

about a mysterious sunken lake
in Oregon

and he vowed to visit it
one day.

It would take
William Gladstone Steel

15 years to get there.

MAN AS WILLIAM STEEL:
Imagine a vast mountain,

6 by 7 miles through,

at an elevation of 8,000 feet
with the top removed

and the inside hollowed out,

then filled with the clearest
water in the world,

and you have
a perfect representation

of Crater Lake.

COYOTE: When a volcanic eruption

witnessed by the ancestors
of the Klamath Indians

blew the top off a mountain peak
in the Cascades 7,700 years ago,

the hole that was left
began slowly filling

with each year's rainfall
and snowmelt.

The result was Crater Lake--

at 1,942 feet, the deepest lake
in America.

Because it is filled
almost entirely by snowfall,

the lake is also
the world's clearest.

An 8-inch disc lowered
into its sky-blue waters

is still visible 142 feet
below the surface.

William Steel resolved that
it should be protected forever,

just like Yellowstone
and the other parks.

That quest took him
another 17 years

of tireless promotion
and lobbying

before he finally succeeded
in 1902,

when Crater Lake
became the nation's

sixth national park.

And it had all happened

because of this accidental
lunchtime reading

32 years earlier.

DUNCAN: The parks, they're
the greatest spots on earth,

wonderful natural places,

but the story of national parks

really isn't a story
about the place.

It's--it's the story of people

who fell in love
with those places,

people who became
so devoted to them

that they wanted to do anything
they could to save them.

SMITH: Richard Wetherill.

He's broadening out
from Mesa Verde.

He wants to make people aware

that we have such a treasure,
such a heritage here,

and yet here's this cowboy.

A cowboy, and we all know
what cowboys are.

We read in our dime novels.

They can't be doing
anything scholarly.

COYOTE: Despite his lack
of formal education,

Richard Wetherill wanted to be
taken seriously

as an archaeologist.

He had left Mesa Verde
and began scouring the Southwest

in search of other ruins.

His journey took him from
Colorado to Utah and Arizona

and finally to New Mexico,
to a place called Chaco Canyon.

Another eerily silent
set of ruins

left behind
by the ancient Puebloans.

With walls
of remarkable workmanship,

some rising 5 stories,

Pueblo Bonito, the biggest ruin,

contained remnants
of an enclosed plaza,

35 circular kivas,

more than 2 acres
honeycombed by 650 rooms,

connected by small
passageways and doors.

The religious and cultural hub
of the civilization

that had dominated
the surrounding region

between 850 A.D. and 1200 A.D.

By itself, Pueblo Bonito
was several times larger

than anything at Mesa Verde

and it sat in the midst
of an array

of nearly a dozen other
significant ruins.

Wetherill moved there
with his wife Marietta,

filed a homestead claim,

and hired nearly 100 Navajos
to help with the excavations.

Though Wetherill tried
to carry on his work

as carefully and scientifically
as possible,

professional archaeologists
still dismissed him

as a pothunter.

And as the relics
he was unearthing

reached eastern museums,

50,000 pieces of turquoise,
10,000 pieces of pottery,

5,000 stone implements,
and much more,

they clamored for the government
to do something to stop him.

SMITH: Richard Wetherill
was very careful

identifying everything he found.

He was ahead of
the professional archaeologists,

which is an oxymoron
at that time,

but he was ahead of them,

and I think they were
jealous of him.

There's a snobbishness.

Educated Easterners
can't believe

that a western cowboy could
possibly be doing these things.

COYOTE: For his part,
Wetherill said,

he would gladly turn over
any portions of Chaco Canyon

if the federal government
would simply do something

to protect them.

But the criticism
of Wetherill's work

would not go away.

[Bird cawing]

COYOTE: Meanwhile,
back at Mesa Verde,

the ruins Wetherill had first
discovered were in danger.

Thieves, pot hunters,
and tourists

were flocking to the site,

looting the artifacts,
damaging the ancient structures,

sometimes even setting off
sticks of dynamite

simply to frighten away
the rattlesnakes.

Now a new group
had taken up the cause

of protecting its treasures.

WOMAN: Mesa Verde
seems to be set apart

for a park,

and to make and keep it as such

is the aim of the Colorado
Cliff Dwellings Association

of Women.

Virginia McClurg.

COYOTE: Virginia McClurg
was a well-known lecturer

with a seemingly
boundless determination

to leave her mark on the world.

She gathered a group of women

into the Colorado
Cliff Dwellings Association,

organized petitions,

wrote personal letters
to the president,

held rummage sales,
and solicited

10-cent contributions
from other women's groups

across the country.

And it was working.

Support for protecting
Mesa Verde

had become a national cause.

But just when Congress
seemed ready to act,

it became clear
to those around her

that Virginia McClurg
had a different vision

of how Mesa Verde
should be preserved.

WOMAN AS VIRGINIA MCCLURG
I do not see why

this small and compact tract
in the proposed park

should not be under
the protective care

of a body of 125 women
with hereditary membership

who know more about the matter
and care about the matter

than anyone else.

Virginia became
so engrossed in it

that it suddenly was not
our park as a nation,

it was her park.

COYOTE: Twice McClurg
even negotiated leases

between her group
and the Ute Indians

only to have the federal
government remind her

that private citizens
cannot make treaties.

The uproar she created

threatened to derail
the bill in Congress

at the very moment it seemed
headed for passage.

Even some of her closest allies

now suspected
that Virginia McClurg

had lost sight of the real goal.

Lucy Peabody, the association's
vice regent,

had preferred to get results
rather than grab headlines.

She believed that
only as a national park

could Mesa Verde be properly
saved for future generations,

and now felt compelled to resign
from the association.

With her went
many other members,

including some of the group's
most nationally prominent women.

McClurg, once the darling
of the press,

found herself disparaged
in newspaper editorials.

SMITH: There was a sadness
in all this.

At the moment of your greatest
achievement, you lose it.

I--I think it's
a normal reaction.

This becomes
so possessive with her

that to have it within
your grasp, right there,

and it's gone.

COYOTE: On June 29, 1906,

President Roosevelt
signed the law

creating Mesa Verde
National Park,

the first of its kind,

meant to celebrate
not majestic natural scenery

but a prehistoric culture
and its people.

With Mesa Verde protected,

anger over
Richard Wetherill's excavations

at Chaco Canyon in New Mexico
boiled over

and set in motion events
that would change the course

of park history.

SMITH: The bill for Mesa Verde
was just for Mesa Verde,

but what about the other ruins?

There's sites all over
the Southwest,

and the same thing's
happening there.

COYOTE: Once more,
Representative John F. Lacey

came to the rescue of places
nowhere near and nothing like

his native Iowa.

He sponsored a new bill to make

any unauthorized disturbance
of any prehistoric ruin

a federal crime.

The act for the preservation
of American antiquities

also granted the president
of the United States

an extraordinary power:

the exclusive authority without
any Congressional approval

to set aside places
that would be called

not national parks
but national monuments.

MAN: John F. Lacey
gave the president

the greatest power a president
could ever have

for the preservation of nature,

which allowed the president
to do

something as simple
as pick up a pen

and declare an area
of the public domain

a national monument,

and since Teddy Roosevelt
happened to be

the president at the time,

was that a gift or what?

Bully. Delighted.

Teddy Roosevelt
picked up that pen

and started creating
national monuments

and the country would
never be the same again.

COYOTE: Roosevelt quickly
put his new powers to use.

He proclaimed the first
national monument,

a unique mass of grooved rock
sacred to several Indian tribes

rising nearly 900 feet above
the plains of eastern Wyoming.

It was called Devil's Tower.

Then he named El Morro
National Monument in New Mexico,

a rock abutment bearing
prehistoric Indian petroglyphs

as well as the inscriptions
of early Spanish expeditions

that had come north from Mexico
300 years earlier

and founded a colony 15 years
before the Pilgrims

landed at Plymouth Rock.

And on March 11, 1907,

he did exactly what
Richard Wetherill had wanted

and created Chaco Canyon
National Monument.

Roosevelt would also
use the antiquities act

to protect an endangered grove
of coastal redwoods

north of San Francisco

named in honor of the man who
had first introduced Roosevelt

to the giant trees--

Muir Woods.

MAN AS JOHN MUIR: The man of
science, the naturalist,

too often loses sight
of the essential oneness

of all living beings

in seeking to classify
them in kingdoms,

orders, species, etc.

While the eye of the poet,
the seer,

never closes on the kinship
of all God's creatures.

And his heart
ever beats in sympathy

with great and small alike

as Earth-borne companions
and fellow mortals

equally dependent on Heaven's
eternal love.

COYOTE: In 1905, John Muir's
life had been beset by sorrow.

His devoted life Louie
died of lung cancer

and he buried her
next to her parents

near an orchard on their farm.

President Roosevelt,
who had lost his first wife

as a young man,

and then found solace
in the open spaces of the west,

sent his personal condolences.

"Get out among the mountains
and trees, friend," he wrote.

"They will do more for you than
either man or woman could."

But the aging mountaineer
went instead

to the deserts of Arizona,

where it was hoped
his daughter Helen

might recover from pneumonia.

In his grief, he began exploring
the surrounding area

and discovered that in fact
he was, once again,

in a majestic forest,

only this one was
200 million years old

and all of the trees
had long ago fossilized

into solid rock.

It was the petrified forest.

EHRLICH: I think parks represent
the wildness inside us.

They're the place
where we can be lonely,

where we can
experience solitude.

They're a place we go to
as refuge, as sanctuary.

It's a place we go out to
to come back in.

It's the only place perhaps left
in many people's lives

where that's possible.

COYOTE: Soon, Muir was
himself again,

sometimes taking total strangers
on long walks

through the tumbled and broken
stone trees.

In what he now called

"these enchanted
carboniferous forests,"

he loved nothing more
than to sit

near the trunk
of a petrified tree

and inspect it minutely
with a magnifying glass.

But even this forest
was endangered.

Scavengers used dynamite
to blow up large logs

in hopes of finding
amethyst crystals inside them.

Boxcar loads of petrified wood
were being shipped east

to be made into tabletops
and mantelpieces.

An enormous stone crusher
was being constructed

to pulverize the logs for use
as industrial abrasives.

For years, John F. Lacey had
been trying to protect the area

by making it a national park.

Congress would not go along.

But John Muir knew somebody

who now could save
his enchanted forest

with a stroke of his pen.

President Roosevelt invoked
the antiquities act again,

and Petrified Forest
National Monument was created.

MAN AS THEODORE ROOSEVELT:
There is nothing more practical

than the preservation
of beauty,

than the preservation
of anything

that appeals to the higher
emotions of mankind.

I believe we are past
the stage of national existence

when we could
look on complacently

at the individual
who skinned the land

and was content for the sake
of 3 years' profit for himself

to leave a desert
for the children of those

who were to inherit the soil.

JENKINSON: If government
doesn't protect

the weakest elements of humanity

and the weakest elements
of nature...

the whole game is lost.

That was
an incredible breakthrough

for a man who grew up

in a profoundly
Republican household

in an age of J.P. Morgan
and John Rockefeller.

There's a paradox at the very
center of American life.

We are meant to be
the most materially happy,

wealthiest, most privileged
people who ever lived on Earth.

That's one version
of the American dream.

We are also Thoreau's Americans
and Jefferson's Americans,

and Roosevelt's
Grand Canyon Americans.

We want that, and somehow
we've gotten it into our heads

that we can have both,

and maybe we can.

But Roosevelt understood
that we can only have both

if we severely restrain
our acquisitive energies

for some parts
of this continent.

That's the key.

UDALL: We used to talk
about Teddy Roosevelt

having distance in his eyes...

and that's what's important,
is to have this

strong, powerful
part of our heritage vivid

so that people can understand it
and appreciate it.

COYOTE: Before his presidency
was over,

he would create
5 new national parks,

51 federal bird sanctuaries,
4 national game refuges,

18 national monuments,

and more than 100 million acres
worth of national forests.

Now Roosevelt wanted one more
national park added to his list,

the place he had urged
the citizens of Arizona

to leave as it is--
the grandest canyon on Earth.

Developers were already
erecting buildings,

miners were filing claims,

and ranchers were grazing cattle
all along the south rim.

But even Theodore Roosevelt
could not persuade Congress

to act.

Local sentiment
and vested interests

were just too powerful.

The president looked
for some way, any way

to prevent the canyon
from becoming

another commercialized
Niagara Falls.

He found his solution
in the antiquities act.

CRONON: It was written
basically to try to prevent

the destruction of Indian
archaeological sites

in the American southwest,

the idea being that
there were people going in

and robbing these graves,

and that that
needed to be stopped.

And so a law is written
that says the president

can very quickly set aside
a tract of land

as a national monument,

and that's a fairly
narrow purpose.

But there were no
restrictions in the law,

and Teddy Roosevelt
quite quickly realized

that you could set aside land

for reasons
other than archaeology,

and the great beneficiary
of that law would be

the Grand Canyon.

COYOTE: The wording
of the antiquities act

referred to protection
of so-called

"objects of historic
and scientific interest,"

and though it had contemplated
only small-sized parcels,

up to then, no more than
5,000 acres,

it did not absolutely restrict

the number of acres a president
could set aside.

On January 11, 1908,
declaring the Grand Canyon

"an object of unusual
scientific interest,

"being the greatest
eroded canyon

"within the United States,"

Roosevelt set aside
806,400 acres

as a national monument.

It would not enjoy
the same protections

as a national park,

but it was a step
in the right direction.

Politicians in Arizona
were outraged

and threatened to challenge
Roosevelt in court.

Members of Congress complained

that the president
had overstepped his authority.

He ignored them all.

UDALL: A lot of Westerners,
powerful Westerners,

Congressmen, senators,
were opposed and critical...

and that was part
of Teddy Roosevelt's power,

that he could overwhelm
the wishes of local people

and dared to do it.

JENKINSON: Well,
there was furor.

There is always furor
when these things happen.

Short-term.

But Roosevelt understood

that short-term
controversy over nature

leads to long-term benefit.

Roosevelt's view was that
an intact environment

is infinitely more valuable
spiritually and economically

than an extracted one.

UDALL: But history
always vindicates,

always vindicates what they did.

There's not a single person
in Arizona today

who would say the Grand Canyon
was a mistake.

MAN AS JOHN MUIR:
The very first reservation

that ever was made
in this world,

the garden of Eden,
contained only one tree.

The smallest reservation
that ever was made.

Yet no sooner was it made

than it was attacked
by everybody in the world--

the devil, one woman,
and one man.

This has been the history
of every reservation

that has been made
since that time,

that is, as soon as
a reservation is once created,

then the thieves and the devil
and his relations

come forward to attack it.

DUNCAN: He said,
"Nothing dollarable is safe"...

and it's like this insight
into human beings,

but particularly Americans.

He understood
this relentless grasp

of American commerce.

It wants to reach
into everything.

And he realized
that if a dollar value

could be attached to,
in his mind, a sacred place,

it was vulnerable.

COYOTE: Since the start
of the 20th century,

the city of San Francisco
had been looking

for a better supply of water
to fuel its growth,

and it had set its sights
on the Tuolumne River

and the Hetch Hetchy Valley

as the perfect place for a dam
and reservoir,

a narrow valley
remote enough to assure

that the waters trapped
from the yearly Sierra runoff

would stay pure.

The fact that it was
within the boundaries

of Yosemite National Park

only added to its
attractiveness to city planners.

No competing claims
to water rights existed.

The only land owner to deal with
was the federal government.

Damming and flooding
Hetch Hetchy

would be cheaper and easier
than finding alternative sites.

MAN AS JOHN MUIR: That
anyone would try to destroy

such a place seems incredible,

but sad experience shows
that there are people

good enough and bad enough
for anything.

COYOTE: To John Muir,
allowing a dam

in any national park

would betray the very purpose
of parks,

and even worse in his eyes,

set a dangerous precedent
for the future.

Hetch Hetchy was among his
favorite places in Yosemite.

He called it
"one of nature's rarest

"and most precious
mountain temples."

With its own majestic waterfalls
and massive granite faces,

it had all the beauty of
the more famous Yosemite Valley

20 miles to the south, he said,

without the clutter
of tourist hotels.

When he had helped
draw the boundary lines

for the national park
back in 1890,

he had deliberately included
Hetch Hetchy.

MAN AS JOHN MUIR:
These temple destroyers,

devotees of
ravaging commercialism,

seem to have a perfect contempt
for nature,

and instead of
lifting their eyes

to the god of the mountains,

lift them
to the almighty dollar.

Dam Hetch Hetchy.

As well, dam for water-tanks

the people's cathedrals
and churches,

for no holier temple
has ever been consecrated

by the heart of man.

COYOTE: At first,
Muir's view had prevailed.

Theodore Roosevelt's
interior secretary

turned down San Francisco's
application 3 different times.

Then on April 18, 1906,
a tremendous earthquake

had shaken San Francisco,

bringing down
hundreds of buildings

and igniting fires
that consumed most of the city,

killing thousands.

With San Francisco
reduced to ashes,

politicians redoubled
their efforts

for a reservoir at Hetch Hetchy,

claiming falsely
that its water supply

could have prevented
the destruction.

In a referendum,
San Franciscans voted 7-1

in favor of the dam.

The city's mayor
launched a campaign

attacking Muir's character

for trying to obstruct
the project.

Even Muir's own Sierra Club
split over the issue,

with some prominent members
advocating the dam.

MAN: They loved Yosemite,

but they loved Yosemite
in a kind of additive way.

It wasn't at the core of their
understanding of America.

And for them in San Francisco,
the city came first.

COYOTE: Meanwhile, an old
adversary of Muir's

stepped forward
on the city's behalf--

Gifford Pinchot.

As the nation's top forester

and President Roosevelt's
trusted adviser,

Pinchot had become
one of the most powerful

men in Washington.

At his urging,
Roosevelt had reserved

millions of acres
of western land

as national forests

in the face
of Congressional opposition.

Pinchot steadfastly believed

that conservation meant
wise use of nature,

not preserving it
for its own sake,

and he had never been
a wholehearted supporter

of national parks,

let alone John Muir's
unbending vision

of protecting
and expanding them.

When a new interior secretary
joined the administration,

Pinchot began lobbying him
in support of the dam.

In response, Muir once again
took his case

to the man with whom
he had shared

3 magical nights in the park
back in 1903--

the outdoorsman he considered
a friend and kindred spirit.

MAN AS JOHN MUIR: April 21,
1908. Dear Mr. President,

a few promoters
of the present scheme

all show forth
a proud set of confidence

that comes from
a good, sound, substantial

irrefragable ignorance.

Hetch Hetchy is one of the most
sublime and beautiful

and important features
of the park,

and to dam and submerge it

would be hardly
less destructive and deplorable

than would be the damming
of Yosemite itself.

Faithfully and devotedly yours,
John Muir.

MAN AS THEODORE ROOSEVELT:
My dear Mr. Muir,

Pinchot is rather favorable
to the Hetch Hetchy plan.

I have sent him your letter

with a request
for a report on it.

I will do everything in my power

to protect not only
the Yosemite,

which we have already protected,

but other similar great natural
beauties of this country.

But you must remember
that it is out of the question

permanently to protect them,

unless we have a certain degree
of friendliness toward them

on the part of the people
of the state

in which they are situated.

CRONON: What makes the conflict
between Muir and Pinchot

so bitter, so personal

is that 2 really wonderful
visions of the human good,

both of which
are worth celebrating,

are on a collision course,

and that collision course meets

in Hetch Hetchy Valley
in Yosemite National Park.

For one man, Muir,
that valley and that park

are a cathedral,

and anything that might
desecrate that cathedral

is blasphemy.

It is a--it is a sacrilege
against God.

For the other man, Pinchot,

these are resources that serve
the common good.

These are resources
for a democracy.

COYOTE: But Pinchot
was in Washington

and Muir was in California.

Pinchot's view prevailed.

Pending Congressional approval,

the interior secretary granted
San Francisco's application,

calling it "the greatest benefit

"to the greatest
number of people."

President Roosevelt did nothing
to stop it.

Muir was devastated.

But the fight was not over.

A year later, with Roosevelt
out of the White House,

the new president,
William Howard Taft,

came to California on his own
tour of Yosemite,

and to the dismay of
San Francisco's politicians,

chose Muir as his guide.

Before the visit was over,
Taft decided to oppose the dam.

By 1913, however,

yet another president
had taken office--

Woodrow Wilson, who chose
as his secretary of the interior

Franklin K. Lane, the former
city attorney for San Francisco.

Lane wasted no time getting
the project back on track.

Muir was now 75, and the long
battle over Hetch Hetchy

had taken its toll.

Ten years earlier,
he had anticipated

completing 20 books
in his old age.

Because of what he called
"this everlasting

"Hetch Hetchy business,"

he had managed to finish only 2.

"I wonder,"
he wrote his daughter,

"if leaves feel lonely when they
see their neighbors falling."

Still, he soldiered on,
speaking, writing,

urging anyone who would listen

not to flood
the exquisite valley.

"I still think we can win,"
Muir said

in November of 1913, adding,

"anyhow, I'll be relieved
when it's settled,

"for it's killing me."

3 weeks later, the bill
approving the dam

cleared its final hurdle
in Congress.

President Wilson
quickly signed it into law.

MAN: It was sorrowful indeed

to see him sitting
in his cobwebbed study

in his lonely house

with the full force
of his defeat upon him

after the struggle of a lifetime
in the service of Hetch Hetchy.

I could not but think that
if Congress, the president,

and even the San Francisco
contingent could have seen him,

they would certainly
have been willing

to have delayed any action
until the old man had gone away.

And I fear that is
going to be very soon...

as he appeared to me
to be breaking very fast.

Robert Marshall.

COYOTE: Exhausted and frail,

Muir forced himself
to finish a book

on his travels in Alaska.

He built new bookcases
in the big, empty house

he had once shared
with his wife Louie

and their 2 children.

MAN AS JOHN MUIR:
The battle for conservation

will go on endlessly.

It is part
of the universal warfare

between right and wrong.

Fortunately, wrong cannot last.

Soon or late, it must
fall back home to Hades,

while some compensating good
must surely follow.

They will see
what I meant in time.

There must be places
for human beings

to satisfy their souls--

food and drink is not all.

There is the spiritual.

In some, it is only
a germ, of course.

But the germ will grow.

COYOTE: In December of 1914,
he came down with pneumonia.

On Christmas Eve, John Muir,

the wilderness prophet
who had struggled so hard

to get his adopted country
to experience

the blessings of nature, died.

POPE: I think when John Muir
walked into Yosemite,

a century-long
conversation began...

and it was a conversation about
the nature of America

and about whether
we were going to remain

what Lincoln called
"the last best hope of Earth"

or whether we were simply
going to become another Europe.

And John Muir's
encounter with Yosemite--

remember, he was a European.

He came from this
narrow Scots background.

He was not an American.

And he encountered Yosemite
and he imagined what America

could be.

And for a century,
we've fought about

whether we liked
his vision or not.

MAN: I like what he said
on one occasion

where he essentially said,
"the enemies of wildness

"are invincible,
and they are everywhere,

"but the fight must go on...

"and for every acre
that you gain,

"10,000 trees and flowers
and all the other forest people

"and the usual
unborn generations

"will rise up
and call you blessed."

COYOTE: 4 years
after Muir's death,

work on the dam he had opposed
with all his strength began,

and the Hetch Hetchy valley,

whose tranquil meadows he had
compared to a landscape garden

and a mountain temple

would slowly be entombed under
hundreds of feet of water.

But Muir's fight had struck
a chord in many Americans,

who now wondered
if a lovely valley

in Yosemite National Park

could be turned
into a reservoir,

were any national parks safe?

CRONON: John Muir lost the fight
over Hetch Hetchy

and the dam was built,

and people who live
in San Francisco today

drink the water of Hetch Hetchy.

Muir died feeling that
he'd been defeated by that,

and that was a great tragedy
at the end of his life.

But it's also true that
Hetch Hetchy would then go on

across the 20th century

as a kind of battle cry
that would inform

all wilderness, wild land,
parkland battles

from that moment on.

It looks like a defeat, and yet
what's interesting about it

is that in that defeat,
a whole series of people

began to wonder whether
the parks needed more protection

than they currently had.

That there needed to be
some greater rampart,

some greater wall that could
defend the parks

against a future
such controversy.

COYOTE: A proposal
that Muir had supported

now began gaining greater ground
across the nation--

to create an agency
within the federal government

whose sole job would be
to promote, administer,

and protect the national parks,

to make sure they fulfilled
their great promise

and endured
for countless generations.

MAN: Muir said...

MAN AS JOHN MUIR: As long as
I live, I will hear the birds

and the winds
and the waterfalls sing.

I'll interpret the rocks
and learn the language

of flood, of storm
and avalanche.

I'll make the acquaintance
of the wild gardens

and the glaciers

and get as near to the heart
of this world as I could.

And so I did.
I sauntered about

from rock to rock,
from grove to grove,

from stream to stream,

and whenever I met a new plant,

I would sit down beside it
for a minute or a day

to make its acquaintance,
hear what it had to tell.

I asked the boulders
where they had been

and whither they were going

and when night found me,
there I camped.

I took no more heed to save time
or to make haste

than did the trees or the stars.

This is true freedom,

a good practical
sort of immortality.