All language subtitles for NatParks-D6_English_Full

[Wolf howls]

[Wind blowing]

[Bird cawing]

MAN: I think wolves are
probably the perfect symbol

of that earlier time before
we human beings set out to

conquer nature.

[Howling]

They're sort of the resistance
movement to everything that

we represent.

The brothers and sisters of
the wolves' ancestors are

the ones who came over to the
campfire to join our ancestors

and become our most loyal pets.

The wolves' ancestors are the
ones who refused to come into

the campfire, and we've never
really forgiven them for that.

[Howling]

They remained free, wild,
undomesticated, dangerous.

And long after they no longer
posed a real threat to us

and our survival, I think we
still held it against them

that they were out there,
free and wild and dangerous,

and went out to do as good
a job as we could of getting

rid of them.

MAN: It is a better world
with some buffalo left in it.

A richer world with some
gorgeous canyons unmarred by

sign boards or superhighways,
undrowned by power or

irrigation reservoirs.

If we preserved as parks only
those places that have no

economic possibilities,
we would have no parks.

And in the decades to come,
it will not be only

the buffalo and the trumpeter
swan who need sanctuaries.

Our own species is going
to need them, too.

It needs them now.

Wallace Stegner.

PETER COYOTE: Since its
beginnings in the mid-19th

century, the national park
idea had embraced two equally

important, yet apparently
contradictory thoughts... that

the park should preserve
America's special places

in their natural conditions
forever and that they should

be open and accessible for the
enjoyment of all Americans.

Early park leaders had glossed
over any paradox, arguing that

the best way to protect the
parks was to build public

support for them by
encouraging more

and more visitors.

But with the end of World War
ll, as the parks neared their

100th birthday and an
increasingly affluent

and mobile nation placed
demands on them as never

before, the balancing act
between preservation and use

would be severely tested.

MAN: It's hard to imagine
these places existing without

those tensions.

They are precisely the right
tensions that a democratic

nation should have as it tries
to figure out how to protect

lands that are there
for all the people.

COYOTE: The very definition
of what constituted a national

park would be challenged and
then broadened, and just when

it seemed as if there were no
pristine places left to set

aside as national parks,
a new one would be created

in the backyard of
one of the nation's

fastest growing cities.

While far to the north, in
the nation's last frontier,

the basic principles of
the park idea would be

reinvigorated for
a new generation.

MAN: I'm not quite sure why it
works this way, but we seem to

put our highest ideals in
our national parks.

They're like, um, homes
for our finest dreams,

and therefore they function
like consciences.

MAN: When you're standing
there silently in the presence

of the giant sequoias,
you can't help but recognize

that you're a part of
something that is way beyond

whatever it is that you
envision this world might be.

You can't stand there all
alone without understanding

that there's a power in the
world that is far greater than

anything that you've ever
experienced and that you're

connected to that power just
as that sequoia is connected

to that power.

It permeates all of us.

And when you understand that,
it improves your relationship

with your fellow man because
you realize that he has

the same capacity.

He has the same access.

He is your brother.

[Big band music playing]

COYOTE: In 1946, with the
war finally over and gasoline

rationing and travel
restrictions lifted,

attendance at Yellowstone
National Park quadrupled from

189,000 to 807,000.

Two years later, it would
cross the one million mark

for the first time
and never turn back.

MAN: All of a sudden,
everybody in the world wanted

to come to Yellowstone.

Everyone was tired of the war.

Everyone wanted recreation.

Everybody flocked to
Yellowstone in their own cars.

There weren't
enough campgrounds.

There weren't enough hotels.

There weren't enough souvenirs.

There weren't enough anything,
and the buildings had had 4 or

5 years to deteriorate, so
the park facilities were

in bad shape.

COYOTE: All across the United
States, the same thing was

happening in other parks,
straining the entire system.

Nationwide, annual attendance
would climb from a wartime low

of 6.8 million visitors
in 1943 to nearly

32 million by 1950.

CRONON: One of the things that
happened in the 1950s with the

explosion of families in cars
taking their kids on the road

to visit the national parks
was that more and more

American children grew up
with the national parks as

a formative part of their
childhood, and I think we

often forget that in fact one
of the aspects of the national

parks that is most important
to our American-mess, to our

patriotism, is the fact that
they are landscapes of origin

and of childhood for
so many Americans.

They are the places
where we grew up.

They are the places where
we experienced our families

in some of their most intimate
locations and where our

families and our childhoods
connected to what it meant to

be an American.

MAN: It was just like being
in heaven, being in there.

In those days,
there was no road.

The park was all a blessed
wilderness, and I have often

thought since, what a
wonderful people we would have

been if we had wanted
to keep it that way.

[Thunder]

Adolph Murie.

COYOTE: Back in the summer of
1922, a college student from

Moorhead, Minnesota, named
Adolph Murie arrived in

Mt. McKinley National
Park in Alaska.

The park had been established
5 years earlier, but Congress

had only recently appropriated
any money for its protection

and development... $8,000 used
to hire a superintendent

and one assistant, who were
instructed to patrol 2,200

square miles, an area
half the size of Connecticut.

They were also expected to
keep poachers away from the

wildlife and prepare the park
for the tourists promoters

hoped would soon be coming
to see the highest mountain

in North America.

That year, a total of
7 showed up.

One of them was Adolph Murie,
who was there to help his

older brother Olaus,
a biologist, conduct a study

of caribou migrations.

Murie was 22 years old.

It was his first time
away from Minnesota.

MAN: Ade Murie was
not an imposing

or intimidating-looking
kind of a man.

He kind of had a Minnesota
farmer's look about him,

and I don't mean that as
an insult, but he was not

an overwhelming person by looks.

He was,
however, in terms of character

and intelligence and durability
and stick-to-it-iveness,

a man to be reckoned with.

COYOTE: For 5 weeks, Murie and
his brother tramped for miles

across the tundra, following
game trails and the braided

gravel beds of glacial rivers,
exulting in the notion that

they seemingly had the park
entirely to themselves.

One day he came across
the lone footprint of

a grizzly bear.

MAN AS ADOLPH MURIE: In
innocent wonder, I gazed

at the imprint.

It was a symbol more poetic
than seeing the bear himself,

a delicate and profound
approach to the spirit

of the Alaska wilderness.

We come here to catch a
glimpse of the primeval.

We come close to the
tundra flowers, the lichens,

and the animal life.

Each of us will take
some inspiration home.

A touch of tundra will enter
our lives and deep inside make

of us all poets and
kindred spirits.

COYOTE: Adolph Murie's trip
to Alaska inspired him to get

a doctoral degree in biology,
and George Melendez Wright

recruited him for the Park
Service's newly formed

Wildlife Division.

By the late 1940s, Murie had
made a name for himself as

a top-rate field biologist and
as an iconoclast whose views

on the direction of park
policies often got him

in trouble with his superiors.

At Olympic National Park,
where wolves had been hunted

to extinction years earlier,
he called for

their reintroduction.

No one listened.

At Isle Royale in Lake
Superior, the moose population

had grown so plentiful
because of a lack of natural

predators, he wrote, that
the park looked "like"

"a prosperous barnyard."

And at Yellowstone, Murie
objected to plans to build

a golf course and opposed a
proposal to drain a wetlands

around the Old Faithful Lodge
in order to reduce the number

of mosquitoes bothering
the tourists there.

MAN AS ADOLPH MURIE: Let us
leave a few wilderness shrines.

Let there be a few outstanding
scenes which can be viewed

without the attendant
chatter of the idly curious.

MAN: The heart of the
legislation that established

Yellowstone and the other
parks is to preserve

the environment.

It's as simple as that, and if
you're going to preserve

the environment, you have to
preserve the creatures,

the critters, that live there.

COYOTE: Like his mentor
George Melendez Wright, Murie

believed many long-held
assumptions about predators

needed to be scientifically
tested, and he spent two years

studying what to do about
Yellowstone's coyotes.

The answer, he concluded,
was not killing the hated

predators but changing
park policies.

SCHULLERY: When he produced
his study of the coyotes

in Yellowstone and
demonstrated that they weren't

this... this scourge on the
landscape and how they

actually functioned compared
to how people thought they

functioned, that they weren't
turning Yellowstone into

a reservoir of evil that
produced countless coyotes

that went out and killed off
ranchers' livestock, it took

a long time for that
lesson to soak in.

COYOTE: Yellowstone's
superintendent was so upset,

he shelved the report and
nearly got Murie fired.

Now one of only 3 biologists
left in the Wildlife Division,

Murie was dispatched to the
nation's most remote and least

visited national park... Mt.
McKinley in Alaska, the park

that had made such a profound
impression on him years

earlier, and once again
he would find himself

on the unpopular side of a
raging controversy when he

embarked on the first in-depth
study ever undertaken of wolves.

MAN: The wolf is the master
killer of all wildlife,

the villain in Alaska's
pageant of wildlife,

and the worst natural enemy
of sheep, moose, and caribou.

Alaska Game Commission.

BROWN: Wolves represented
death and destruction.

That bloodthirsty, ravening
wolf was viewed as a kind

of an interloper.

I mean, you had
the nice animals.

You had caribou and deer and
sheep, and here were these

wolves who would tear them
apart and eat them in full

view of visitors, and
that was anathema.

I mean, extinction was the word.

COYOTE: Americans had been
killing wolves for centuries.

Despite a Park Service policy
against the extermination

of any animal species,
they had been systematically

eliminated at Grand Canyon,
Crater Lake, Death Valley,

Grand Tetons, Mt. Rainier,
Olympic, Rocky Mountain,

and after the death of two
wolf pups in 1926, Yellowstone

National Park.

Alaska was now virtually the
only place left in the United

States where wolves
still existed.

WOMAN: At one time, the Park
Service was ordered to shoot

every wolf they saw.

They figured that anything
a wolf gets, the hunter

doesn't get.

But just to shoot wolves to
say they shot a wolf... let's...

Let's shoot Democrats.

Let's shoot Republicans.

I mean, it made that much sense.

COYOTE: During his first
season back in Alaska,

Murie walked more than
1,700 miles, crisscrossing

the park, gathering data and
whenever possible taking

photographs and home movies
to augment his extensive

field notes.

He analyzed more than 1,000
samples of wolf droppings

to determine their eating
habits, collected 829 skulls

of Dall's sheep to study their
teeth and understand the age

and health of the
animals when they died.

His second year,
he discovered a wolf den.

MAN AS ADOLPH MURIE: On
a ridge across the river

from the den,
about a half mile or less

away, there were excellent
locations for watching

the wolves without
disturbing them.

I spent about 195
hours observing them.

The longest continuous vigil
was 33 hours, and twice I

observed all night.

MARTIN MURIE: Well, you've got
to have patience. Oh, yeah.

You have to be devoted.

If you have to climb a tree
in 30 below and sit there

for an hour shivering,
you do it.

Every day you're out there.

Doesn't matter what the weather.

He was that type.

COYOTE: He would be at it for
nearly a decade, even moved

his wife and children to
a remote cabin in the park

and temporarily adopted a wolf
pup he named Wags so he could

study its development as it grew
from a nursling to full size.

Over time, Murie would get to
know wolves better than any

scientist ever had, and the
report he produced would

become a landmark in
understanding the species.

WOMAN: I often think if
we were to send

for a representative of our
species to meet with the

animals, we would send Ade
because he's a man who knows

how to listen.

He was a man who
understood stillness.

And more than anything,
his curiosity and his

extraordinary sense of science
opened up the landscape

in a new way for all of us.

He saw the land as a set
of relationships, nothing

in isolation,
everything connected.

COYOTE: Murie's conclusions
that wolves actually

strengthened the sheep and
caribou herds by culling out

the sick and the weak were
denounced by hunting groups

across the country as a piece
of pro-wolf propaganda from

start to finish.

As private bounty hunters
and federal Fish and Wildlife

Service officers initiated
a campaign of poisoning

and shooting wolves throughout
the rest of Alaska, pressure

mounted for the park
to eradicate its wolves, too.

In response, the Park Service
agreed to a limited wolf

control program, but the
person they selected to

oversee it was none other than
Adolph Murie, who kept the

number of kills to the barest
minimum, thinning out only

elderly wolves near the end
of their natural lives.

And when the sheep herd grew,
just as Murie had predicted,

the Park Service quietly
instituted a permanent ban

on all wolf killings.

It was the first time in
history that the species

nearly everyone seemed to
hate found protection from any

government agency.

McKinley's wolves had survived.

MAN AS ADOLPH MURIE: Our
generosity to all creatures

in the national parks,
this reverence for life,

is a basic tradition and is
fundamental to the survival

of park idealism.

The goal is to have the
minimum of manipulation

in our parks.

Let us be guardians
rather than gardeners.

Adolph Murie.

MAN: With so many friends,
it is difficult to understand

why parks are so bedeviled by
threats and seem always to be

fighting for their
very existence.

The story is an old one.

There are frequent occasions
when people see nothing wrong

with harming, hurting,
marring, or spoiling when

there are valuable resources
of water, power, timber, oil,

or minerals to be exploited
within park boundaries.

Greatest of all threats to the
parks today is the pressure to

build dams.

Alfred A. Knopf.

COYOTE: By 1950, Americans who
needed dams for irrigation,

city water supplies,
and hydropower had been

in conflict for half a century
with other Americans who

wanted national parks kept off
limits from any development.

John Muir had fought and lost
the first battle when the city

of San Francisco used its
political muscle to win

federal approval for building
a darn in the beautiful Hetch

Hetchy Valley within
the boundaries

of Yosemite National Park.

The defeat had galvanized the
nascent conservation movement

into pushing for creation
of the National Park Service

in 1916 to make sure nothing
like Hetch Hetchy would ever

happen again.

Now in the aftermath
of World War ll,

as the populations of states
in the arid west began to

skyrocket, pressure for
more dams only intensified.

With the enthusiastic backing
of virtually every elected

official in the region,
plans were drawn up for

9 billion dollars' worth of
dam projects, including two

in a remote corner of Utah
and Colorado where the Green

and Yampa Rivers converge in
the midst of winding sandstone

canyons, a place
known as Echo Park.

But Echo Park was also the
site of Dinosaur National

Monument, first set aside in
1915 to safeguard an important

discovery of prehistoric bones
and then expanded in the 1930s

to include the dramatic
canyonlands upstream.

Few people had ever visited
the monument or paddled

through its network of
canyons, but the handful who

had considered it almost sacred.

MAN AS WALLACE STEGNER:
This is a country as grand

and beautiful as any
America can boast.

A 325-square-mile preserve
that is part schoolroom

and part playground and part...
The best part... sanctuary from

a world paved with concrete,
a world mass-produced

with interchangeable parts,
and with every natural,

beautiful thing endangered
by the raw engineering power

of the 20th century.

Wallace Stegner.

COYOTE: Even though the Park
Service opposed the dams,

President Harry Truman and
his Secretary of the Interior

supported them.

It was Hetch Hetchy
all over again.

It was exactly the same battle,
but the world had changed.

There were now many more
people prepared to say that,

wait a second.

The national parks are not
supposed to be breached

in this way.

We are not meant to
do this kind of work.

COYOTE: In 1952, with 2 of
his 7 sons and their families,

a 73-year-old retired
chemistry professor named

Harold Bradley made a week-
long trip down the Yampa

River, snapping photographs
and taking home movies as

they traveled.

They had imagined that a
desert region named Dinosaur

would be little more than
an arid, desolate boneyard,

one son remembered.

Instead, they found a world
of stunning beauty.

MAN: My dad knew that there
were plans on the drawing

board for dams in Grand Canyon
and dams that would affect

Glacier Park and
other parks, too.

If Echo Park Dam could be
built, I think a dam could

have been built anywhere in
the national park system,

and they'd say, "Well, you
let us do it at Echo Park."

"Why not do it here
in Grand Canyon?"

COYOTE: Back home in
California, Bradley embarked

on what he called "a one-man
crusade to save Echo Park" by

showing his home movie to
anyone who would watch it.

Among those who saw it
was David Brower, the new

Executive Director of the
Sierra Club... young and brash

with a flair for
public relations.

MAN: When I was 8 years old
and when my brother was 6,

we went down the Yampa and
Green Rivers, and it was part

of my father's campaign to
stop dams in Dinosaur National

Monument, and it... you know,
I look back on it now and I

realize what a piece
of history it was.

Many people see it as the
beginning of the modern

environmental movement.

My father used film,
used books, used trips like

this down the river.

He was building a constituency
of people to appreciate

this landscape.

COYOTE: Brower organized
Sierra Club outings through

Dinosaur's canyons and invited
influential Easterners to

join them.

Alfred A. Knopf, the New York
publisher, emerged from one

trip so impressed that he
commissioned a handsome book

of photographs and essays,
edited by the novelist

and historian Wallace Stegner.

Knopf himself wrote one of
the book's essays and made

sure every member of
Congress received a copy.

Other organizations sprang
into action, hoping to

mobilize public opinion and
kill the project in Congress,

where approval of the darn
seemed almost certain.

Harold Bradley helped persuade
the Garden Club of America to

oppose the darn and mail
leaflets to its members

encouraging them to write
their Congressmen about it.

The General Federation
of Women's Clubs did

the same thing.

My brother Steve was the
one that got Pop interested,

and Pop was the one who got
Dave Brower interested,

and Dave Brower, once he was
interested, kind of galvanized

the entire conservation
community, and Echo Park

really kind of put
conservation on the front page

for the first time instead
of something back

with the obituaries.

COYOTE: When mail began
pouring into Congress

at a ratio of 80:1 against the
Echo Park dam, the Speaker

of the House reluctantly
delayed consideration

of its approval.

Authorization for the larger
string of dams and reclamation

projects would eventually
pass, but without the ones

in Dinosaur National Monument.

Public opinion had been felt.

A new national environmental
movement had been born

and immediately began battling
against any other attempts to

despoil the parks and
America's wild places.

DUNCAN: You can save a place,
but it's never really safe.

It always takes people caring.

It always takes vigilance.

It always takes effort to keep
those forces at bay that want

to crowd in, want to
change it, want to

over-commercialize it.

Once it's ruined, it's ruined,
but once it's saved,

each generation has its
duty to keep it saved.

MAN AS WALLACE STEGNER:
Sometimes we have withheld our

power to destroy and have left
a threatened species like

the buffalo, a threatened
beauty spot like Yosemite or

Yellowstone or Dinosaur
scrupulously alone.

We are the most dangerous
species of life on the planet,

and every other species,
even the earth itself,

has cause to fear our
power to exterminate.

But we are also the only
species which, when it chooses

to do so, will go to great
effort to save what it

might destroy.

Wallace Stegner.

MAN: Charles Stevenson,
"Reader's Digest."

Drive to Yellowstone, as
my wife and I did late last

summer, and the moment you
enter, you are in a big city

traffic jam.

Pause to look at sights you've
come thousands of miles to

see, and cars pile up bumper
to bumper a quarter of a mile

behind you.

COYOTE: The 32 million
Americans who had crowded into

their national parks each
year as the fifties began had

suddenly become nearly 62
million before the decade was

even halfway through.

98% arrived by car.

The parks weren't
ready for them.

MAN AS CHARLES STEVENSON:
Yosemite Valley proper has

become a city festering with
commercialism and ugliness.

This spot, which Theodore
Roosevelt once called the most

beautiful in the world,
now boasts 3 acres

of burning dump.

Lovely meadows have been paved
to provide parking space.

Warehouses and stores
obstruct famous views.

The campgrounds pack in
about 97 persons to the acre.

Campers line up 15
deep for the toilets.

[Car horn honking]

COYOTE: "The people," a park
official said, "are wearing out

"the scenery."

The situation was the
same in every park.

To make matters worse,
staff levels and budgets were

no bigger, and sometimes
smaller, than they had

been during the Depression.

Meanwhile President Dwight D.
Eisenhower was pushing through

Congress the biggest public
works program in history... an

interstate highway system.

Conrad Wirth, the new Park
Service director, proposed

a similar 10-year plan for the
parks, timing its completion

with the agency's upcoming
50th anniversary in 1966.

He named the ambitious
project Mission 66.

"The national parks," Wirth
said, "are in danger of being

"loved to death," and he called
for spending $787 million,

more than half for new
construction, and the rest

for repairs, better
maintenance, and more staff.

The president enthusiastically
agreed.

Work began almost immediately...
Fixing roads, modernizing

water and sewer systems,
improving campgrounds

and adding new ones, doubling
the park's lodging capacity.

Museums, rest rooms,
and information offices were

consolidated into a single
modern structure strategically

located to intercept large
numbers of people arriving by

car, prepare them for their
park experience through

a series of displays and
presentations, and send them

on their way.

Wirth called them
visitor centers.

Before Mission 66 was through,
110 of them would be built.

But as the work continued,
many of the park's oldest

allies became Mission
66's harshest critics.

They hated the
increased development

and the architectural
choices being made.

They thought the new
buildings were ugly.

The loudest complaints
came from David Brower

and the Sierra Club
and focused on highway

construction, particularly a
plan to bulldoze and pave the

Old Tioga Road across a long
granite escarpment, skirting

the shores of beautiful Tenaya
Lake in the high country

of Yosemite.

KENNETH BROWER: We went as
kids with my father because he

was photographing it, and we
were outraged because we had

the religion, and while my
father was photographing,

my brother and I said, "Well,
let's get to it," and we

started taking the
survey stakes out.

And we had gotten quite a
few of them out before my

father noticed.

It wasn't my father's style,
and he said no, we'd better

put them back.

COYOTE: In the end,
the road got built.

Some Sierra Club members now
questioned the entire premise

of helping more
people visit the parks.

MAN: I think the battle about
that road was the first moment

when the Sierra Club began
to realize that Muir's notion

that you had to bring people
to the parks to make them

value them and save them was
a two-edged sword... that if you

brought too many people to the
parks, you could ruin them,

even if the people
who came loved them.

COYOTE: The controversy
would forever tarnish some

of the real accomplishments
of Mission 66.

But the American people,
mostly unaware of the debate,

continued to flock to
their national parks.

Going to the parks was
becoming an American rite

of passage-journeys creating
memories that would last

a lifetime.

MAN: In 1959, my mother
took my brother and me from

Binghamton, New York,
across the west.

My father had died in 1958,
and we did the grand circuit

of the national parks.

My mother made us navigate.

She gave us the road maps,
and we picked the routes.

We chose the camp sites.

We had been to
Yellowstone for 3 days,

seen all the wonders, and then
dropped down into the Tetons

and Jackson Hole,
and I was hooked.

I was a lover and defender
of the national parks

for the rest of my life.

MAN: 1955 in the summer,
my wife and I and my little

boy spent the night in
Yosemite National Park.

My little boy had heard about
what you could see in national

parks, and he was particularly
interested in the bears.

He'd never seen a
bear in the wild.

At night, after we'd turn
out the lights, we heard the

garbage pails outside being
handled by some force, and he

said, "Dad, is
that the bears?"

I said, "I think so."

He said, "Let's
go out and see."

I said, "No. You can't
go out and see the bears."

"Just hope that they
will not bother us."

And I know that when I took
my son to a national park

for the first time that I was
planting in him the seed that

would cause him to want
to take his family to

a national park.

CRONON: I think for me,
the moment that the national

parks really changed my life
was when I was in fifth grade.

My parents put my brother and
me into the back of a Ford

station wagon, and we left
Madison, Wisconsin, and spent

6 weeks circumnavigating the
entire American west, but what

we were really doing was going
from national park to national

park to national park to
national park, and it was

so overwhelming, it moved
me so deeply, that it

changed my life.

I would not now do what I
do in my life were it not

for that experience.

Part of it was the vistas,
but what I most remember was

opening the door of that car
and getting out and walking to

some site with my parents,
and my father in particular,

who's a wonderful storyteller
and, like me, is a historian,

always having some story to
tell about the place that we

were in that carried me back
into layers of the past that

were also in the place that
we were in in the present.

And in that reconnection of
past and present, discovering

that there was far more to see
in the place I was in than I

ever would have imagined
without the stories that he

shared with me in that place.

DUNCAN: I grew up in
a little town in Iowa.

Both of my parents worked,
so we didn't take very

many vacations.

My dad would paint the house
during his vacation, or maybe

we'd go fishing in a lake in
Minnesota, but we never went

on real trips.

And when I was just
about to turn 10,

we decided, this year
we're going to do it.

We packed up borrowed camping
equipment from people we knew,

borrowed my grandmother's car,
and headed west.

Urn, it was a great experience.

We went to the Badlands.

I had never seen
something like that.

Playing and running around
on that denuded,

bizarre landscape.

We went to Custer Battlefield,
as it was called then... the

Little Big Horn.

I found an arrowhead that I
was pretty sure probably was

Crazy Horse's.

It wasn't until I was a father
myself that my dad revealed

that he had bought that
arrowhead in the gift shop

and dropped it right
underneath me.

And then we came to Yellowstone.

We arrived two days after
the great earthquake of 1959.

We lived through 3 or 4 tremors.

The earth was
shaking underneath me.

The forces that had created
Yellowstone were reawakening.

Half of the park was closed.

When we went to the geysers,
the rangers talking would say,

"Well, this geyser used to go
off about every two months."

"Whoop! There it is now."

Or "this one," you know, "hasn't
gone off since the earthquake."

The earth was in motion there.

We went to the bottom of the
waterfalls, and I thought,

"Boy, I am not
in Iowa anymore."

MAN: I'm probably the last
Secretary of Interior... this

was 42 years ago... who will
be flying along in a plane

and look off and say,
"Goodness, that ought to be"

"a national park" and seeing
it become a national park.

So it was a wonderful period
of expansion and of new ideas

in terms of what the Park
Service should be doing.

SINGERS: All the
leaves are brown

All the leaves are brown

And the sky is gray

And the sky is gray

I've been for a walk

On a winter's day

On a winter's day...

COYOTE: Throughout the 1960s,
Stewart Udall would serve as

Secretary of the Interior
to presidents John Kennedy

and Lyndon Johnson, overseeing
the most ambitious program

of creating new parks
since the time

of Franklin Roosevelt.

The pace of population growth
and development in the west

gave Udall, a former
Arizona Congressman, a sense

of urgency.

"What we save now," he said,
"may be all we save."

He joined forces with
the Sierra Club to push

for creation of Redwood
National Park along the

northern coast of California,
home to the tallest trees

in the world, which over
a lifetime spanning two

millennia, can grow 300 feet
high, requiring an environment

of rainfall, fog, and soil
found only in a narrow band

of land a few
hundred miles long.

By the 1960s, logging had
cleared 85% of the original

redwood forest.

The national park saved
half of what remained.

In west Texas, Guadalupe
Mountains National Park,

the ancient remains of
an ocean reef rising out

of the desert, had once been
the home of grizzly bears,

wolves, and buffalo, as well
as the Mescalero Apaches,

who used the mountain oasis
as a refuge until they, too,

were driven out.

"My Lord," Udall said when he
first saw it, "what a paradise

"that place is."

He also supported North
Cascades National Park,

a road-less wilderness on
the border of Washington

and Canada, containing
318 glaciers in its jumble

of mountains, nearly 1/3 of
all the remaining glaciers

in the lower 48 states.

And in the stark desert of
eastern Utah, where the Green

River meets the Colorado
amidst a seemingly endless

maze of meandering canyons,
is a place John Wesley Powell

had first described in 1869
as a "wilderness of rocks"

"and a world of grandeur."

Powell had given the features
he saw names like Cataract

Canyon, the Dirty Devil,
the Labyrinth.

A hundred years later,
Udall helped give it all

another name... Canyonlands
National Park.

UDALL: I remember a
night when I woke up.

We were camping up on the high
cliffs, and I looked off into

what is the Doll's House
and the Maze, and the moon

came through.

It was like I was
transported into anther world.

There was a few minutes where
I just felt that I was having

an experience that I
would never have again.

COYOTE: Udall also helped
persuade Congress to set aside

other parts of the American
landscape and place them under

Park Service protection.

National seashores from Cape
Cod in Massachusetts to Padre

Island in Texas to Point
Reyes in California.

National lake shores like
Indiana Dunes and Picture

Rocks in the Great Lakes.

The Ozark National Scenic
Riverway in Southwestern

Missouri, the first in a
string of rivers that would

have portions kept in
their free-flowing,

natural conditions.

National trails like the
Appalachian Trail, extending

2,100 miles from
Georgia to Maine.

And national recreation areas,
often reservoirs behind

the dams being built
all over the west.

To help him, Udall named
George Hartzog the new Park

Service director, who brought
to the job the same energy

and back-slapping political
skills Stephen Mather had used

so successfully
50 years earlier.

Hartzog would push the Park
Service to have a greater

presence in urban areas,
to serve minority populations

that did not yet have a
relationship with the parks,

and to increase the number of
historic and cultural sites.

To him, the park system's role

in preserving and interpreting
American history was just as

crucial as protecting
the large natural parks.

HARTZOG: My father,
from South Carolina, only made

one trip out of that state
during his lifetime, and that

was to visit our family
here in Washington.

And he said, "I want to
see the Lincoln Memorial."

Abraham Lincoln was not a
favorite historical personage

in the low country of South
Carolina when I was a boy

growing up, and neither was he
in my family and in our home,

and I was surprised that the
only thing he wanted to see

in Washington D.C. was
the Lincoln Memorial.

I started to get out of the
car, and he said, "No, I want"

"to go alone," and I sat there
and watched him walk those

steps, and he got there and
stopped and faced Lincoln

and turned to the right and
went around that memorial

and read every saying of
Lincoln's and came back

and got in the car.

Tears were welling in his
eyes, although they were not

running, and he said to me,
"I'm now ready to go home."

That's what they mean.

CROWD SINGING:
We shall overcome...

COYOTE: On August 28, 1963,
Hartzog witnessed a much

larger crowd at the Lincoln
Memorial when a quarter

of a million people converged
on the National Mall as part

of the March on Washington to
protest the Jim Crow laws that

still discriminated against
African Americans in the south

and to call on Congress to
pass a civil rights bill to

bring them to an end.

There, a young minister
named Martin Luther King Jr.,

who had recently been jailed
in Birmingham, Alabama,

who the director of the
FBI considered a Communist

sympathizer and whose life was
in constant danger from people

who hated the color of his
skin and everything he stood

for, gave a speech that would
be considered a turning point

in American history.

KING: I have a dream that my
4 little children will one day

live in a nation where they
will not be judged by the

color of their skin but by the
content of their character.

I have a dream today!

[Cheering and applause]

This will be the day when all
of God's children will be able

to sing with new meaning "My
country 'tis of thee, sweet"

"land of liberty,
of thee I sing."

"Land where my fathers died,
land of the pilgrims' pride,"

"from every mountainside,
let freedom ring."

And if America is to be
a great nation, this must

become true.

[Cheering and applause]

And when this happens, we will
be able to speed up that day

when all of God's children...
Black men and white men,

Jews and Gentiles, Protestants
and Catholics... will be able to

join hands and sing in the
words of the old negro

spiritual, "Free at last,
free at least, thank God"

"Almighty, we're free at last!"

[Cheering and applause]

HARTZOG: What higher
purpose can a national park

serve than to be responsive
to the crisis in our society,

to the voice of the
underprivileged, to the voice

of the protester who's
objecting to the institutional

status quo, who is seeing a
need beyond where we are?

It was of the same dimension
as the first time I stood

on the south rim of the Grand
Canyon and looked at that

magnificent canyon
in front of me.

These are everlasting
moments that stay with you

and influence your
life all your life.

FRANKLIN: The idea of the
national parks certainly was

appreciated by Abraham
Lincoln in the 1860s.

A century later, here is
Martin Luther King giving his

great speech "I Have a Dream"
before a vast audience, before

Abraham Lincoln, and with a
park ranger standing by him.

You have this sweep of history.

You have these dramatic turns.

You have these marvelous
coincidences and ramifications

that extend from Lincoln
to King, from the idea

of the national park to the
Park Service officer standing

by King when he gives his
"I Have a Dream" speech.

The parallels of history
are infinite and limitless.

COYOTE: 5 years later,
Dr. King would

be assassinated.

12 years after that,
his birthplace in Atlanta,

Georgia, would be dedicated
as a historic site, part

of the national park system.

[Wolf howls]

MAN AS ADOLPH MURIE: We were
approaching our cabin one

stormy night.

It was snowing and getting
dark, and out of the storm

came music, the long, drawn,
mournful call of a wolf.

It started low, moved
slowly up the scale

with increased volume.

At the high point, a slight
break in the voice, then

a deepening of the tone as it
became a little more throaty

and gradually descended the
scale, and the soft voice

trailed off to blend
with the storm.

We waited to hear again
the voice of wilderness,

but the performer, with
artistic restraint,

was silent.

Adolph Murie.

I think we all pick up certain
sounds or sights that are sort

of symbolic, and I think
that for Adolph, the sound

of the wolf meant wild,
nature, untamed but also

a part of the planet, a part
that we just can't do without.

[Wolf howls]

He felt very much like Thoreau
felt, I think, about wildness.

We got to have it.

COYOTE: When the Mission
66 plans had been unveiled

for Mt. McKinley National
Park, they called for widening

and paving the 90-mile rough
and narrow gravel road that

provided the only access
into the park's interior.

The road would permit a
showcase hotel near beautiful

and quiet Wonder Lake,
expanded campgrounds,

gas stations, and
a visitor center.

No one was surprised when
Adolph Murie came out against

it and submitted a detailed
analysis to the park

superintendent
outlining his concerns.

MARTIN MURIE: Adolph was just
passionately determined to

stop that road, and he was a
very stubborn person for what

he believed in, and we
need stubborn people.

He became more accepting,
more diplomatic as

time went on.

He became more forgiving,
but he knew how to draw a line

in the sand, and when it come
to things like that, Wonder

Park Road, he'd say no.

No.

BROWN: He was the
conscience of the park.

He stood like a rock on
these matters of principle.

He was not unduly cantankerous
or aggressive.

He just lasted.

He just wore away at them like
water on a granite boulder.

COYOTE: "My efforts were not
appreciated," Murie said,

and for the next two years,
he was reassigned to Grand

Teton National Park in Wyoming.

When he was finally allowed to
return to Alaska to continue

his research, Murie was
dismayed at what he found.

The first 13 miles of park
road had been excavated

and paved, and at mile 65,
a visitor center was being

constructed that
looked, he said,

"like a Dairy Queen."

To stop further construction,
he turned to his brother

Olaus, now the director of the
Wilderness Society, for help.

MARTIN MURIE: He kept telling
Olaus, "Now, you got to write"

"about this road."

He'd feed Olaus the data
about the road and say,

"Write about it.
You write beautifully."

"I can't do it.
You can do it."

COYOTE: Olaus Murie was
the perfect person to help.

He was accustomed to
waging public campaigns

and in a position to openly
challenge the Park Service.

This time, the Park
Service director listened.

That was the last frontier.

This is your last opportunity
to save virgin America is

Alaska, and it's enormous.

COYOTE: Hartzog stopped the
roadwork where it was... 13

miles widened and paved,
another 17 widened

but unpaved, and the remaining
60 miles to be kept in more or

less the condition Adolph Murie
had suggested... a narrow

gravel pathway where, he said,
"the feeling one gets is that"

"the road passes through a
wilderness that comes up to"

"the road."

It is still that way today.

MAN AS ADOLPH MURIE:
Freedom prevails.

Even the bad wolf seeks an
honest living as of yore.

He is a respected citizen,
morally on a par

with everyone else.

In our thinking of McKinley,
let us not have puny thoughts.

Let us think on a greater scale.

Let us not have those of the
future decry our smallness

of concept and
lack of foresight.

Adolph Murie.

RUNTE: By the 1960s, if
you stood on Glacier Point

and looked down at Yosemite
Valley, you saw lights.

You saw fires.
You saw cars everywhere.

You looked down at that valley
and you said to yourself,

"This looks more like a city
than it does a national park."

COYOTE: For nearly a hundred
years, one of the biggest

attractions in Yosemite
Valley had been

the dramatic firefall.

Every evening in the summer
season, as throngs gathered to

watch, a huge bonfire would
be built on Glacier Point,

then pushed over the edge
to cascade down toward

the valley floor.

In 1968, Hartzog said no

and ordered a stop to it.

HARTZOG: The firefall
in that magnificent valley was

about as appropriate as horns
on a rabbit, and it should

not be there.

It was an absolutely
spectacular sight, but it was

inappropriate for the silent
tranquility and beauty of that

great valley.

COYOTE: At Yellowstone,
Hartzog also enforced what

George Melendez Wright,
Adolph Murie, and many other

biologists had advocated years
earlier... not just a paper

policy against feeding the
bears, which tourists and park

officials had routinely
ignored, but a concerted

effort at weaning the bears
from human food along the

roadside or at garbage dumps.

SCHULLERY: They saw it as
beneath the dignity

of a national park...

That these bears should in
some sense have a right to

a more natural life and that
people should be experiencing

them in a more natural way.

COYOTE: New park policies now
recommended placing scientific

research as the basis
for management decisions,

emphasizing that the complex
ecology of each park be

restored to what it had
once been and stating that

a national park should
represent a vignette

of primitive America.

Slowly, in the tension between
preservation and use, parks as

nature's sanctuaries and parks
as tourist resorts, things had

begun to shift a little,
back in nature's direction.

George Melendez Wright's
old vision was finally being

taken seriously.

MAN: I like the
quiet out here.

I'm not pestered or
bothered by a lot of people.

I am alone, but I am not lonely.

When you have plenty of
interests, like the water

and the woods, the birds
and the fish, you don't

get lonely.

Lancelot Jones.

COYOTE: By the 1960s, no one
knew Biscayne Bay, off the

southeastern tip of Florida,
better than Lancelot Jones.

He had been born in the bottom
of a small boat there in 1898

while his father was
frantically sailing his

pregnant mother toward
a hospital in Miami.

From that time on, the
bay had been his home.

His father, Israel Lafayette
Jones, had risen up from

slavery in North Carolina,
migrated to Florida after

the Civil War, and steadily
improved life for himself

and his Bahamian wife.

Eventually, he had managed
to buy 3 of the small,

uninhabited islands that
separate Biscayne Bay from the

Atlantic Ocean and began a
profitable business growing

key limes.

In honor of his favorite
story, "The Knights"

"of the Round Table," he had
proudly named his two sons

King Arthur Jones and Sir
Lancelot Jones, hoping,

perhaps, Lancelot said later,
that by giving us great names,

we would become great men.

But 3 years after his father's
death, the Hurricane of 1935

had laid waste to the family's
lime crops and forced Lancelot

into a new line of work as
a fishing guide for wealthy

visitors to Biscayne Bay.

By the 1960s, there were
plenty to go around.

Just across a small channel
from Jones' modest home

on Porgy Key was the Cocolobo
Club, an exclusive retreat

for some of the
multimillionaires who wintered

at Miami Beach, men with
names like Firestone, Maytag,

Honeywell, and Hertz.

They had this exclusive
club down there, and it was

nice for them.

COYOTE: Lancelot Jones became
the favorite fishing guide

for them and for
their politically

well-connected friends.

GREENE: He was a tall,
lanky kind of guy and very

hospitable, and he seemed like
a perfectly happy guy living

out there by himself.

He knew a lot of people.

A lot of important people
would stop by and visit him

when they went down there,
including all these big shots

that belonged to
that private club.

He knew where all the fish
were and where everything else

was, too, down there.

COYOTE: But other millionaires
had other plans for the bay

and its chain of more than
3 dozen pristine islands.

In 1961, a shipping tycoon
announced he intended to

construct a deep-water port,
an oil refinery, and

an industrial complex once
he dredged a deeper channel

through the shallow bay 8
miles out to the ocean.

At the same time, a group of
developers proposed a bridge

linking the mainland to the
islands to do with them what

had already happened at Miami
Beach and Key Biscayne... a

series of high-rise hotels,
retail shopping centers,

and private
beachfront properties.

The organizers convinced
authorities to create the city

of Islandia and ferried a
voting machine to Elliott Key,

where they staged an election
attended by 14 of the 18

registered voters, all of them
absentee landowners hoping to

cash in on the
anticipated real estate boom.

Lancelot Jones, one of only
two full-time residents

of the new Islandia,
was not among them.

He was against their plans and
had also turned down offers

from the refinery
developer to buy Porgy Key.

MAN AS LANCELOT JONES: I never
thought commercialization

of this land was right.

I always felt this land was
not right for development,

that it should stay as it is.

COYOTE: Meanwhile, a small
group had formed to fight

both proposals.

Lloyd Miller, an avid
fisherman, believed the

refinery and seaport would
turn one of Florida's most

fertile fish-breeding grounds
into a stagnant pool

of oily water.

Juanita Greene,
an enterprising young writer

for the "Miami Herald,"
worried that

the considerable financial
interests behind both

developments were
steamrolling the plans toward

hasty approval.

Her own newspaper
supported the refinery.

She thought the public was
not only being shut out

of the decision but would also
be denied access to precious

waterfront once everything
was completed.

It would become, she warned,
"a rich man's paradise."

GREENE: I could see that for
the average Joe who wanted to

go to the beach on Sunday
afternoon, there were fewer

and fewer places to go.

I didn't think that that was
fair that only people who

could live in the fancy hotels
or the condominiums had access

to the beach.

I objected mightily to it and
wrote a story in which I said

"This is a freak city with
lots of power and no people."

And it was true.

COYOTE: At a meeting held
around her dining room table,

Greene, Lloyd Miller,
and another friend,

Art Marshall, decided that
the only way to stop the

development of the islands was
to make it a national park.

Greene persuaded her newspaper
to at least cover the budding

opposition movement and to
allow her to write occasional

opinion pieces advocating
her point of view.

As the public leader of the
opposition, Miller found his

car sprayed with paint.

People urged his
employer to fire him.

An anonymous caller
threatened his family.

GREENE: And somebody
poisoned his dog.

So Lloyd had to put up with a
lot, but he was a determined

man, and he was not gonna
be run out of this.

COYOTE: Slowly their
movement gained strength.

A slate of anti-refinery
candidates was elected to

the county commission.

Local political leaders
withdrew their support

for a bridge to the islands.

And after visiting the bay,
Stewart Udall came out

in favor of protecting it.

In October of 1968, Lloyd
Miller was peering over

the shoulder of President
Johnson as he created Biscayne

National Monument, saving
173,000 acres of the bay,

coral reefs, and islands.

[Seagull cawing]

MAN SINGING: Sitting
in the mornin' sun...

COYOTE: The first private
landowner to sell his land to

the federal government for
the new national monument was

Lancelot Jones... 277 acres on 3
islands on the condition that

he be allowed to live out
his life in the family home

on Porgy Key.

MAN SINGING: Sittin'
on the dock of the bay...

GREENE: And that's the
kind of guy he was.

MAN SINGING:
...tide roll away...

GREENE: He was not one of
these greedy people that was

waiting for the developers
to come pay him big bucks

for his land.

He just liked things the way
they were and was willing to

help other people have
an opportunity to enjoy

the islands.

COYOTE: His favorite pastime
was teaching small groups

of schoolchildren about
the bay's fish and sponges

whenever the Park Service
brought them to Porgy Key.

The only compensation he
asked for was a key lime pie.

MAN SINGING: Watching
the tide roll away...

MAN AS LANCELOT JONES: I
like the name "monument."

It means that things here are
going to stay pretty much as

they are today.

Lancelot Jones.

[Singer whistling]

MAN AS WALLACE STEGNER: The
national park idea, the best

idea we ever had,
was inevitable as soon as

Americans learned to confront
the wild continent not

with fear and cupidity,
but with delight,

wonder, and awe.

Once started, it grew like the
backfire it truly was, burning

backup wind against the
current of claim and grab

and raid...

proving that our rapacious
society could hold its hand,

at least in the presence of
stupendous scenery, and learn

to respect the earth for
something besides its

economic value.

Wallace Stegner.

COYOTE: On March 1, 1972,
Yellowstone, the world's first

national park,
celebrated its centennial.

During its 100 years of
existence, the park had seen

its wildlife wantonly
slaughtered by poachers

and then protected by law.

Yellowstone had been guarded
by cavalrymen and park

rangers, defended by poets,
and studied by scientists.

Endlessly painted and
photographed by artists

and amateurs alike, toured by
one American president after

another, seeking everything
from exhilarating inspiration

to simple relaxation.

Yellowstone had been the site
of everything from Indian wars

to bitter fights over
the limits of commercial

exploitation, battles over
the value of nature,

and a continuing argument over
how Americans could enjoy its

treasure house of wonders
without ruining it

for the next generation.

Along the way, Yellowstone
had become one of the most

recognizable symbols
of America itself.

In 1972,
Old Faithful, still spouting

as regularly as it did when
it got its name a century

earlier, would thrill
2.2 million people.

But they would represent
a tiny fraction of the 165

million visitors who came that
year to a park system that now

had a presence in nearly
every state in the union... 38

national parks and roughly
200 historic sites, national

monuments, and other places
Americans had set aside

for posterity.

By the 1970s, the park idea
had spread from Yellowstone

all the way around the world,
ultimately becoming, like the

idea of freedom itself, one of
America's greatest exports...

More than 4,000 parks
in nearly 200 nations.

MAN SINGING: Light out singing

And walking in the morning
sunshine

Sunshine daydream

COYOTE: But back in the United
States, in the farthest corner

of the nation, the national
parks were about to experience

their most dramatic expansion.

WOOD: Most people ask,
"What brought you to Alaska?"

but the question to ask
is "What made you stay?"

We just fell in love
with the country.

The country told us what
it should be and what it

shouldn't be.

I think that being out there
was a little bit like Conrad

said of the sea... it's not
for you or against you.

It's just very
unforgiving of errors.

COYOTE: In the hundred years
since Secretary of State

William Seward had purchased
it from Russia in 1867, Alaska

had had the nickname Seward's
Folly, especially by those who

believed a territory so
remote and so far north was

a colossal waste of the $7.2
million Seward had agreed to

pay, even if it was more than
twice the size of Texas.

John Muir had a
different name for it.

MAN AS JOHN MUIR: To the lover
of pure wildness, Alaska is

one of the most wonderful
countries in the world.

This is nature's own
reservation, and every lover

of wildness will rejoice with
me that by kindly frost it is

so well defended.

MAN: Alaska was the last
chance to do it right.

This is it. This is the
end of the line.

So we buckled down, and it
became a very serious affair

about what to do with Alaska.

COYOTE: After Alaska was
granted statehood in 1959,

a federal law was passed to
settle the claims of Alaska's

native peoples, including
the Inupiaq and the Tlingit,

the Aleut and the Athabaskan.

The land was to be divided up,
some for the new state to

control and open for
development if it wished,

some for the tribes, and a
portion to be withheld forever

in the national interest
for all Americans.

As the discovery of vast oil
deposits on the north slope

and the construction of
the trans-Alaska pipeline

demonstrated, the
stakes were enormous.

The fight over what to do with
the federal land would consume

more than a decade and would
quickly become a national one,

waged in the halls of
Congress, involving commercial

and industrial groups
capable of spending millions

of dollars in advertising and
lobbying, versus the Alaska

Coalition, a collection of 50
environmental groups which

quickly mushroomed to
1,500 organizations,

representing 10 million
members, most of whom had

never set foot in Alaska.

It was the largest
grassroots conservation effort

in American history.

POPE: An entire generation
came along and said, "We want"

"to be part of this," and for
them, the Alaska battle was

the culmination.

We'd passed clean air
and clean water acts.

We'd passed the Wilderness Act.

We'd set aside millions
of acres of wilderness

in the 1970s, and suddenly we
had a landscape where we could

really save what
was best about it.

People embraced it.
People rallied to it.

It was the chance
to get it right.

COYOTE: In the mid-1970s,
Congressman Morris Udall

of Arizona, the brother of
Stewart Udall, sponsored

a bill setting aside 110
million acres of federally

owned land in Alaska.

In May of 1978, Udall's
bill passed overwhelmingly

in the House... 277 to 31.

But in the Senate, even though
a clear majority favored

the legislation, a threatened
filibuster by Alaska Senator

Mike Gravel tied things up,
preventing a vote before

Congress adjourned.

It appeared that the big
dreams for preserving large

sections of Alaska would
be for nothing.

Then, President Jimmy Carter,
acting on the recommendation

of his Interior Secretary,
Cecil Andrus, decided to

bypass Congress and invoke
the Antiquities Act, a tool

presidents have been using in
the name of conservation since

Theodore Roosevelt.

On December 1, 1978, Carter
took out his pen and signed

executive orders creating 17
national monuments covering

56 million acres of the
most critical areas

in Udall's bill.

In Alaska, all hell broke loose.

MAN: I'd be in favor of
sending a contingent of state

troopers to Washington to
arrest President Carter

and Andrus for conspiracy to
commit a felony, namely the

theft of millions of acres
of land in Alaska.

DIFFERENT MAN: In a new
national monument near Mt.

McKinley, about 1,500 Alaskans
staged what they said was

a trespass.

They ran races, shot guns,
claimed they had violated 27

laws, and dared park
rangers to arrest them.

HEACOX: You have a frontier
mentality in Alaska.

"We want to do things our way."

The opposition was intense.

Park planes were burned.

President Carter was
burned in effigy.

People protested in the streets.

RUNTE: In New York City, 99%
of the people would be

for the park.

In Alaska itself, 99% of the
people in some of these towns

were against the parks because
they lived there, and they

didn't see how the tourist
industry was going to benefit

them in any way.

COYOTE: To handle the volatile
situation on the ground,

the administration chose John
Cook, a westerner who had

earned a reputation as
a tough problem-solver.

The parks were in his blood.

His father and his grandfather
had worked at the Grand

Canyon, and he joined the Park
Service the day he graduated

from high school, steadily
working his way up the ladder.

COOK: When I stepped off the
plane, I was the third least

popular person in Alaska.

The least popular
was President Carter.

Cecil Andrus was pretty
unpopular as well.

He was the number two man,
and then it was me.

We were told they would kill
the first Park Service person

that set foot in Duffy's
Tavern in northeast Alaska.

4 days later, I walked into
Duffy's Tavern with a tape

recorder and a roll of maps,
wearing Alaska clothes,

in the middle of winter flew
a ski plane in and sat there

with 200 people, half of them
getting pretty tanked up,

and faced them all, talked to
them, told them what was gonna

happen and what
wasn't gonna happen.

COYOTE: On the Kenai Peninsula
at the head of Resurrection

Bay was the small town of
Seward, named for the

much-maligned politician who
had made Alaska part

of the United States.

Its economy revolved
around fish harvesting

and a commercial port that had
briefly boomed with activity

during the oil pipeline's
construction.

Nearby was the Harding
Icefield, a sheet of ice 700

square miles wide and one mile
thick, spawning more than 30

glaciers, many of which
descend directly to sea level,

where they have carved a
series of deep coastal fjords.

Their waters teem with
wildlife... whales, sea lions,

and seals beyond number.

Carter's proclamation had
created a 570,000-acre Kenai

Fjords National Monument in
hopes it all would eventually

become a national park.

The sentiment in Seward
was dead-set against it.

Twice, the city council
passed resolutions

condemning the idea.

MAN: Beverly Dunham.

DUNHAM: Alaskans are being
criticized for wanting as much

of state lands under
Alaskan control as possible.

We have been termed selfish
for wanting development...

DUNHAM, VOICE-OVER: I
was fearful of it.

I thought the same thing that
most people did, that it was

going to harm us.

Any interference by the
federal government in any way

was offensive to Alaskans
in general and Sewardites

in particular.

We were just fearful of
what would happen to us.

COOK: I was sent up there to
make it work, and what I did

is I hand-picked people.

I brought up a task
force the first year.

I said, "Whatever
you do, never lie to the people."

"Don't whitewash anything.
Go from town to town."

"Live in the towns.
Be truthful."

It's awfully hard to stay
angry at your neighbor if your

neighbor's a good neighbor.

Governor Hammond and I came
up with a term that he used to

help soften things, and that
was that the new national

monuments and tourism would
be Alaska's permanent pipeline

because we won't run out of
visitors but in a long time

run out of oil.

COYOTE: While John Cook tried
to dampen the local hostility

to Carter's proclamations,
the Alaska Coalition prepared

for another Congressional
battle to settle all

the Alaska land issues
once and for all.

My friends, the vote you make
in just a few moments is the

one you've got to live with
and your grandchildren have to

live with.

There ought to be a few places
left in the world the way

the Almighty made them.

We'll never see a buffalo
herd again, but if we're wise

today, your grandchildren
might be able to see

a caribou herd.

This is the test of
conservation in your

Congressional career.

This will be the most
important vote you will cast.

COYOTE: On December 2,
1980, after another year

and a half of debate and
compromise, President

Carter signed the Alaska
National Interest Lands

Conservation Act into law.

It wasn't everything he and
the Alaska Coalition had once

hoped for, but it was still
the largest single expansion

of protected conservation
lands in world history,

creating 4 national forests,
10 national preserves,

16 national wildlife refuges.

The national park system,
with 47 million acres added to

its care, had suddenly
more than doubled in size.

Within those additions were
7 brand-new national parks.

WOMAN: I got a question which...
To write an article on why

we need national parks,
and the question struck me

dumb for a minute.

It was like saying, "Why
do we need air?"

I mean,
we need to have these places,

even if I never go... the
only place I've never been

is Alaska.

Even if I never go to Alaska,
I need to know it's there.

COYOTE: And at Seward,
the national monument at Kenai

Fjords became the seventh
of the new national parks.

5 years later, as the tourist
economy and Seward began to

emerge as a crucial part
of the town's livelihood,

the city council quietly but
officially rescinded its two

previous resolutions
denouncing the park idea.

Several years after that,
they asked that the national

park at their doorstep
be expanded.

DUNHAM: I think it's great.

It has done a lot for Seward.

As far as tourism is
concerned, it has made

a vast difference.

There are, I think, a thousand
seats on day cruisers that

come in and take people
out to the fjords.

It has proven that it
hasn't hurt anything.

If anything, it's enhanced it.

COOK: And in Alaska,
man was acknowledged.

The natives, who were a part
of that landscape long before

European man came and called
it wilderness, were using it.

They still get to use it
for subsistence purposes.

It's still a part of their
culture, and they are a part

of the preservation.

And it's not preserving
museum Indians.

It's preserving a dynamic
culture that's within

a dynamic landscape
that's also changing.

COYOTE: Mt. McKinley
National Park, which had been

in existence since 1917,
was also affected by

the Alaska Lands Act.

Its area was nearly tripled in
size... 2.4 million more acres

to the park itself, plus an
additional 1.3 million acres

in two national preserves next
to it... a dramatically larger

expansion than even Adolph
Murie had proposed just before

his retirement.

The old park, surrounded by
the new additions, was now

officially designated a
wilderness, bringing with it

even greater protections to
the land and animals Murie

had championed.

And as if to symbolize all
that had happened, the park's

name was changed to
reflect its deeper history.

It would revert to the
Athabaskan Indian name

for the tremendous mountain
at its core... Denali,

the high one.

COOK: History will, of course,
view the creation of those

national parks along with
Seward's purchase of Alaska.

History will show that it
was the right thing to do.

COYOTE: John Cook would soon
go back to the lower 48 to

become superintendent of Great
Smoky Mountains National Park.

As his father and his father's
father had done, he would pass

on his love for the national
parks to his children,

including his daughter Kayci,
who would become the fourth

generation of the Cook family
to serve in the Park Service.

KAYCI COOK: At the end of
my father's career in 1999,

I had become what I
always wanted to be,

a superintendent, and I used
my power in that position to

honor my father for his 43-
year career with the National

Park Service, and I invoked
the tradition of the military

tattoo at Fort McHenry
National Monument Historic

Shrine, and I bestowed upon my
father the title of Honorary

Colonel of the
Fort McHenry Guard.

I felt very proud doing that
for him, and as we stood up

and saluted one another,
commander to commander, I felt

much more strongly that it was
a mantle that he was passing

to me much more than anything
that I was giving to him.

I have a 4-year-old son,
Sean, and he has already

expressed an interest in being
a ranger like his mommy.

He sees me put this
uniform on every day.

He loves to wear my hat around.

I think he's showing some
real promise in terms of being

a fifth generation, and that
would not hurt my feelings.

[Car horn honks]

MAN: When I was a child in
Detroit, national parks really

didn't exist.

There were no family trips to
national parks, so it really

didn't exist for me and
for my friends.

We didn't sit around talking
about, "Boy, can't wait to get"

"to the Grand Canyon," you know.

That didn't come up as a topic
of conversation in Detroit

for me as a child.

But always, there was this
desire to see Yellowstone.

There was a desire to see the
Grand Canyon, to see Yosemite.

There was a desire to fully
invest my physical self and my

spiritual self in America
because that's a part

of America that I didn't know,
and I wanted to become

familiar with it.

COYOTE: In 1984, Shelton
Johnson became the first

generation of his family to
visit a national park when he

stepped off a bus at the
entrance to Yellowstone

and immediately fell in love
with everything it offered.

Johnson soon started a career
in the Park Service and by

the 1990s he was working in
Yosemite as an interpretive

ranger, proudly telling
visitors the little-known

story of the African American
buffalo soldiers, the park's

earliest protectors.

In the last decades of the
20th century, the focus

of the Park Service shifted.

More and more historic
sites were saved, including

reminders of painful episodes
in American history, set aside

on the belief that a
great nation could openly

acknowledge them.

From Kingsley Plantation in
Florida, preserving not only

the owner's grand home,
but also the cluster of small

cabins used by the slaves
who made his comfortable

life possible.

The central high school
in Little Rock, Arkansas,

where in 1957 federal troops
had to escort 9 African

American teenagers past
angry mobs to their classes,

crystallizing the crisis
of school desegregation.

From Andersonville, a
deadly Civil War prison camp

in Georgia to a polished slab
of marble in Washington D.C.

listing the names of 58,000
dead and missing soldiers

who served their
country in Vietnam.

From Sand Creek and Washita on
the Great Plains, where Chief

Black Kettle's peaceful
Cheyenne villagers were

massacred by American soldiers.

To Manzanar in the high
desert of eastern California,

where American citizens of
Japanese descent were kept

behind barbed wire
during World War ll.

From Oklahoma City, where
168 empty chairs now

commemorate the men,
women, and children killed

in a senseless act of
domestic terrorism in 1995.

To a field near Shanksville,
Pennsylvania, that

immortalizes the sacrifices
made by passengers aboard

United Flight 93 on
September 11, 2001.

CRONON: When you're asked,
"Well, what is coherent"

"about a system that
contains natural wonders"

"and birthplaces
of famous people?"

I think the answer you come to
is that they are all finally

about a vision of where the
United States comes from.

We come from nature, but we
also come from our own past,

and so the interpretation of
nature and history together is

not a distraction
that the parks face.

It is the very core
of the enterprise.

They are all about
where we come from.

COYOTE: In the years to come,
Americans would continue

expanding the number of
national parks and continue

using them in ever-increasing
numbers, from 255 million

visitors in 1990, then closing
in on 300 million visitors

a decade later... each visit an
opportunity to forge a new

relationship to their land,
their nation, and themselves.

MAN: We need national parks
to have people... especially our

kids... understand
what America is.

America is not sidewalks.

America is not stores.

America is not video games.

America is not restaurants.

We need national parks so
people can go there and say,

"Ah. This is America."

DUNCAN: And then it was my
turn to take my family out to

see the national parks.

It was gonna be our own
epic journey as a family.

If there's a national
park between Arizona

and the Canadian border
along the spine of the Rocky

Mountains, we went there.

We broiled in the sun in
Arches and Canyonlands,

went and visited Dinosaur as
I had when I was a small boy,

hiked around Jenny Lake in the
Grand Tetons, then to wear

bear bells, which was very
exciting for the kids

because bears might be around.

At Yellowstone, I got to
watch my children see their

first bison.

And then we came to Glacier
National Park, and it was

something of a sentimental
return for Diane and me

because 13 years earlier,
when we were courting, we had

gone there.

And as we went up Going to the
Sun Highway, I took a picture

of my daughter, about to
become a beautiful woman

in the same place that her
beautiful mother had once sat

for a photograph, and then we
got to Logan Pass, and my son

Will and I decided to go on
a buddy hike and headed up

toward Hidden Lake.

And we came around a corner,
and coming toward us were

these mountain goats. And I
said, "Shh. Just be quiet."

"Don't do anything to disturb
them, and maybe we'll get to"

"take a picture."

Well, we just stepped to
the side, and this family

of mountain goats came right
down the trail within about 2

or 3 feet of us, and I don't
know whose eyes were bigger,

Will's or mine.

I had asked everybody to
keep a diary during our trip,

and that night in his diary,
Will wrote, "This was the most"

"exciting day of my life."

And so it was the most
exciting day of my life, too.

COYOTE: In January of 1995,
a convoy of trucks entered

Yellowstone National Park
at its northern gate, where

a stone arch dedicated by
Theodore Roosevelt proclaims

the park's purpose... "for
the benefit and enjoyment"

"of the people."

Riding in cages in the trucks
were 14 gray wolves recently

captured in western Canada.

Two months later, after
being kept in small pens to

acclimate them to their new
surroundings, the wolves were

set free, part of a long-range
plan to reestablish

the predators in their former
habitat and make the world's

first national park a little
more representative of what it

had once been.

I keep imagining that first
wolf coming out of its cage,

and I think of Adolph being
there, and he probably would

have cried.

Just think... we now have
wolves in Yellowstone.

COYOTE: Within only a few
years, the wolves were

thriving... part, once more,
of the entire

Yellowstone ecosystem.

WHITTLESEY: I was in the back
country with one of my good

friends, and we're standing
out there in the dark, and we

hear this long, low, throaty
howl, and I'd never heard that

sound before.

[Wolves howling]

And I knew immediately what it
was, and I remember standing

there thinking...

"I am so lucky
to get to hear that"

"sound that has not been
heard in the back country"

"of Yellowstone for
60-some years."

WILLIAMS: I think our
challenge as lovers of our

national parks in the 21st
century will be the challenge

of restoration.

I think that's the story
that's yet to be told,

the story of restoration.

And not only are our national
parks a gift, I think they're

a covenant.

They're a covenant with the
future, saying, "This is"

"where we were."

"This is what we loved..."

"and now it's in your hands."

MAN: One learns that the
world, though made, is

yet being made, that this is
still the morning of creation.

This grand show is eternal.

It is always sunrise somewhere.

The dew is never
all dried at once.

A shower is forever falling.

Vapor is ever rising.

Eternal sunrise, eternal
sunset, eternal dawn

and gloaming.

On sea and continents and
islands, each in its turn,

as the round earth rolls.

John Muir.