National Parks, Term Paper Example

When colonists first arrived and began settling into the land that is now known as the United States of America, they viewed the wilderness more as an obstacle to overcome than any type of comfort.  Nash (1970) notes that one reason colonists were so destructive during their westward sweep across the country was because “the original American mission had no place for wilderness” (p. 727).  Sax (1993) elaborates on the actions of early settlers and contributes much of the “destructive resource exploitation,” which included actions such as annihilation of the buffalo and beaver populations and destroying forests, to the settlers’ needs for urbanization and modernization (p. 47). It was this massive destruction of the land due to eager colonization that prompted the U.S. government to set aside reserves for public use and preservation in order to avoid decimating the entire natural wilderness of the land.

Nash (1970) infers that the exact moment in which the idea of having a national park was born can be narrowed down specifically to May 1832, when George Catlin arrived in an area found in present-day South Dakota (p. 728).  Catlin heard of an instance several days prior to his arrival, in which the Sioux Indians had harvested and given settlers more than fourteen hundred buffalo tongues in exchange for several gallons of whiskey; what horrified Catlin even more was the fact that the carcasses of buffalos whose tongues had been taken were left to rot while the Indians enjoyed their whiskey.  Catlin, in his reflections regarding what might become of such beautiful lands if the portrayed practices continued, wrote that the beautiful wilderness might be “preserved . . . in a magnificent park” rather than being destroyed completely (p. 729). Catlin, a “highly civilized man,” understood that the further one fell from an object, the more one will want the object; this applied specifically to wilderness, and Catlin wrote that wilderness would hold greater appeal the more it is destroyed (p. 729). He went on to suggest a specific park, one that spanned from the east side of the Rocky Mountains to Mexico to Lake Winnipeg and was incredibly large, but would consist of natural wilderness rather than made-up, garden-like woods. Several people got on board with Catlin’s suggestions, including Thomas Cole (an author) and Horace Greeley (an Englishman impressed with the beauty of the United States).

It wasn’t until exactly 40 years after Catlin’s desire for a type of national park that President Ulysses S. Grant assigned an area covering more than two million acres of Wyoming to become Yellowstone National Park (Nash, 1970, p. 730).  Prior to the creation of Yellowstone, however, the United States had no national parks; Lyons (2012) writes of the early attempt of the nation to “set aside protected lands” when he discusses President Andrew Jackson’s legislation, in which the land surrounding present-day Hot Springs, Arkansas was set aside “for the future use of the US government” (p. 20).  Exactly what “future use” entailed was not specified, but this was one of the first instances in which land, which Nash (1970) infers was privately owned throughout almost all of history up until that point, was never expected to be replaced by private possession; the government had owned land prior, but it was assumed “that private ownership would eventually replace that of the government” (p. 732).  After many calls for preservation, including Frederick Law Olmstead’s (the man behind the creation of New York’s Central Park) request to make a park big enough to “completely shut out the city” (Lyons, 2012, p.19), President Grant stepped in and made Yellowstone National Park official.

This creation of a national park, which held intention of protecting the lands from the people (Nash, 1970, p. 732), had heavy impact on both the future of the United States, and the world as a whole.  For instance, Sax (1993) notes that the United States government, as of 1993, owned “82% of Nevada, 64% of Utah, and 68% of Alaska” (p. 48).  More than 90 million acres of land were set aside for 492 wildlife refuges; 74.2 million acres have been set aside for national parks while 200 million acres were used as national forests (p. 48).  Around the world, other nations have been taking notice of what America has been doing and several national parks and forests in other countries have been created to mimic America’s parks; Nash (1970) writes that the Dutch made a park in 1915 that resembled an American park in policy (p. 734), several German parks were turned public (p. 735), and England passed the National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act of 1949 after Lord Bledisloe visited an American park (p. 735).

In an attempt to keep colonization from destroying the natural, beautiful land of what is now the United States of America, national parks were created.  George Catlin had one of the first recorded mentions of such an idea, and after President Grant signed Yellowstone into one of the first national parks, major changes around the world were seen.  The United States government worked harder to protect the land from the people, and other countries followed in their footsteps.

References

Lyons, C. Yellowstone national park: a truly American idea. History Magazine, August/September, 19-22.

Nash, R. (1970). The American invention of national parks. Johns Hopkin University Press, 22(3), 726-735.

Sax, J. L. (1993). Natural and habitat conservation and protection in the United States. Ecology Law Quarterly, 20(47), 47-56.