Our National Park Policy

A legislative and administrative history on the social, cultural, and intellectual significance of the national park idea. Originally published in 1961

The history of the Swiss National Park, from its creation in the years before the Great War to the present, is told for the first time in this book. Unlike Yellowstone Park, which embodied close cooperation between state-supported conservation and public recreation, the Swiss park put in place an extraordinarily strong conservation program derived from a close alliance between the state and scientific research. This deliberate reinterpretation of the American idea of the national park was innovative and radical, but its consequences were not limited to Switzerland. The Swiss park became the prime example of a “scientific national park,” thereby influencing the course of national parks worldwide.

Historians of wilderness have shown that nature reserves are used ideologically in the construction of American national identity. But the contemporary problem of wilderness demands examination of how profoundly nature-in-reserve influences something more fundamental, namely what counts as being well, having a life, and having a future. What is wellness for the citizens to whom the parks are said to democratically belong? And how does the presence of foreigners threaten this wellness? Recent critiques of the Wilderness Act focus exclusively on its ecological effects, ignoring the extent to which wilderness policy affects our contemporary collective experience and political imagination. Tracing the challenges that migration and indigenousness currently pose to the national park system and the Wilderness Act, Grebowicz foregrounds concerns with social justice against the ecological and aesthetic ones that have created and continue to shape these environments. With photographs by Jacqueline Schlossman.

This is the first comprehensive look at America's national park system, an insider's tour covering the system and the National Park Service, the agency responsible for its care. Dwight F. Rettie, former chief of the NPS policy development office, is uniquely qualified to address the state--the problems and the possibilities--of the system, which is comprised of millions of acres of land in more than 350 areas around the nation, including historic sites, battlefields, and recreation areas. Rettie agrees, as many critics have claimed, that the system is in disarray; he proposes in detail stronger management operations, clearer and more stringent measures of personnel performance, and training of park rangers to help them become professionals knowledgeable about the scientific management and protection of resources. For a concerned public as well as for policy-makers and students of government, this comprehensive analysis and outline may provide hope--and a future--for the invaluable legacy that is our national park system.