All language subtitles for NatParks-D5_English_Full

[Bell clanging]

PETER COYOTE: In July of 1929,
a 90-year-old woman returned

to the Yosemite Valley
in California.

She was called Maria Lebrado,
but 78 years earlier as

a young girl, she had been known
by her real name To-Tu-ya,

the granddaughter
of Chief Tenaya, leader

of the Ahwahneechees,
an Indian tribe who

for centuries had called
the valley their home until

in 1851 a battalion of white
men had driven them out

at bayonet point.

To-Tu-ya was the sole
remaining survivor

of that sad moment.

This was her first time back.

Half a generation after the
Ahwahneechees' expulsion,

the federal government had
preserved the beautiful valley

permanently as a national park.

Still, everywhere she looked,
To-Tu-ya was reminded of how

much things had changed.

In a broken mixture of
English, Spanish, and her own

ancient language, she told her
escorts the valley floor was

now more wooded and
brushy than in her day.

Her people had regularly
set grass fires to keep

the meadows open and the
trees and shrubs at bay.

Then she looked up at the
rock walls of the valley.

The great monoliths
and majestic waterfalls

stood unchanged.

Turning toward Half Dome,
the cleft rock she knew as

Tis-sa-ack, she stretched out
her arms and raised her voice

in a strong, clear,
high-pitched call that echoed

off the granite walls.

It was, she explained,
the call her

grandfather Tenaya had
once used to summon his

people together.

Until that moment, she had
been the last one to hear it.

[Woman calling]

WOMAN: They're
islands of hope.

The parks are always where
I can go home again.

I go back to my hometown,
there is a Safeway where I

used to play with
Sylvia Gonzalez, they have taken

and turned my old school
into a junk shop,

but the parks don't do that.

So these are places we
can always go home

and paradoxically that we can
always see into the future

and hope for the better things.

MAN: When we look at parks and
we look at the United States

and we examine the whole idea
of democracy, I think that

the park experience
is an exploration

of the idea of freedom.

Where do I come from,
where am I going,

how did I get here, how did
we as a people get here?

I think that when people go
to a national park, they

get a sense,
a compass to history.

COYOTE: As the 1920s ended,
the United States was about to

enter two of the darkest
and most frightening decades

of the 20th Century, ones
that included an economic

catastrophe that threatened
the foundation of American

society, followed by a war
that threatened the existence

of freedom throughout the world.

For a time during those dark
years, the national parks

would thrive as never before.

In the 1930s and 1940s,
hundreds of thousands

of American boys would go
to the parks in pursuit

of a paycheck and discover
a new sense of dignity.

Then hundreds of thousands
more under different

circumstances would enjoy in
the parks a moment of peace.

And what happens in the United
States is that the American

land comes to embody
the American nation,

and the national parks become
the icons of our nationalism,

the place where we come to
celebrate what it means

to be an American.

COYOTE: The national park
idea was changing, too.

Though the park service had
lost its charismatic first

director Stephen Mather,
a new president and his

progressive administration
would vastly expand the number

of parks and then even more
dramatically expand the very

notion of what a
national park could be.

A young biologist would insist
that the survival of wildlife

is as important as the
preservation of scenery

and that places without
mountains or waterfalls should

be seen as natural wonders,
as well, and in a time when

the future of the country was
most in doubt, the symbols

of her complicated past would
be set aside and cherished

while Americans from every
walk of life and every

possible background would
find in the parks a deeper

connection to their land,
their nation, and themselves.

MAN: My sense is that our
special connection with

the national parks comes from
the fact that we're a nation

of immigrants, we're a nation
of people for whom this is not

home, and the national parks
are what anchor and root us

on this continent.

They are the meaning of
home for many of us.

They're what it means to be
an American and to inhabit

this continent.

It's the end of the immigrant
experience, and they're what

takes you and says,
"Now I am in America."

COYOTE: In April of 1933,
Franklin Delano Roosevelt,

newly sworn in as president,
asked Horace Albright,

the second director of the
National Park Service to come

along with him during a day
trip from Washington to

Virginia's Blue Ridge Mountains.

MAN AS HORACE ALBRIGHT:
The president got in the front

seat, where there was more
room, and they took

the braces off his legs.

He put a cigarette in
his long cigarette holder,

sat back, and relaxed.

I sat behind him on the
jump seat just a few inches

from his ear.

I had a dream I wanted
to make real.

For years, I had wanted to
get the many national military

parks, battlefields,
and monuments transferred out

of the War Department and
Department of Agriculture into

the National Park Service.

As we approached the
Rappahannock River, I began

thinking, "If I'm going
to talk to the president"

"about getting
the military parks,"

"I had better get to it."

Now was the time.

COYOTE: Albright began
pointing out sites important

to the Second Battle of
Bull Run in the Civil War,

then broadened the discussion
to myriad other battlefields

and historic sites in the area.

WOMAN: So my father had
a golden opportunity.

He told him exactly
what he wanted.

He wanted the monuments,
and he wanted

the battlefields.
"All right."

When they got back
to the White House,

"Hey, Albright," he said.

"Tomorrow morning, I want
a plan in my office."

"I want to know what
you want to do."

FRANKLIN ROOSEVELT: And to
the formal duties of the

Park Service by transferring
from other departments many

other parks,
battlefields, memorials,

and national monuments.

COYOTE: Within days, Roosevelt
would sign two executive

orders initiating a sweeping
reorganization that overnight

transformed the Park Service.

From the War Department,
the agency was given

responsibility for more than
20 military parks and historic

battlefields and monuments:
from Castillo de San Marcos,

an ancient Spanish fort
in St. Augustine, Florida,

to Yorktown, Virginia,
where the decisive victory

of the American Revolution
had been won; From Antietam,

where the bloodiest battle
of the Civil War was fought,

to Appomattox Courthouse,
where it ended.

Under the new plan, the Park
Service was now expected to

protect and interpret more
than a dozen nonmilitary

historic sites, as well:
The Statue of Liberty in

New York's Harbor;
Mount Rushmore in South Dakota;

and many
of the District of Columbia's

most hallowed places,

including the Lincoln Memorial,
the shrine to

the president who in 1864 had
given the national park

idea its first
tentative expression.

National parks now embraced
the idea of America itself.

MAN: Our national heritage
is richer than just

scenic features.

The realization is coming that
perhaps our greatest national

heritage is nature itself with
all its complexity and its

abundance of life.

George Melendez Wright.

COYOTE: During To-Tu-ya's
emotional return to Yosemite,

one of her escorts, chosen
because he was fluent

in Spanish, was a young Park
Service employee named

George Melendez Wright.

He had been born into a
wealthy San Francisco family.

His mother came from one of
El Salvador's most

prominent dynasties.

His father was a ship captain.

When they both died
prematurely, he was raised by

an aunt, who encouraged his
fascination with the natural

world, which led to
a degree in zoology.

Working in Yosemite as an
assistant park naturalist,

Wright became convinced that
the parks were fulfilling only

part of their purpose.

By focusing so much on
attracting visitors,

park managers had overlooked
another responsibility,

which Wright called "the very
heart of the National Park"

"System," preserving wildlife
in its natural state.

MAN AS GEORGE MELENDEZ WRIGHT:
When a tourist enters the

park, he is looking for the
same concentration of animals

he saw in the paddocks of
the zoological garden.

A galaxy of bears at our
garbage platform approximates

this concept, and
he is satisfied.

Then comes a day when
his heart skips a beat.

Walking along a deep forest
trail, he comes upon a single

bear eagerly peeling the bark
from a log in search

of fat white grubs.

This is a fresh thrill, and
it brings the realization that

the unique charm of the
animals in a national park

lies in their wildness,
not their tameness, in their

primitive struggle to survive,
rather than their fat

certainty of an easy living.

COYOTE: Though only in his
mid-20s and near the bottom

of the Park Service career
ladder, Wright proposed to his

superiors that he undertake
something that had never been

done before, a scientific
survey of wildlife conditions

in the parks.

It took a year of persuasion,
but he finally won approval

for his plan, partly
because of his persistence

and friendly personality and
also because the financially

independent Wright offered
to pay for the whole

thing himself.

In the summer of 1930 in
a Buick Roadster he had

purchased and customized to
carry camping gear, cameras,

and scientific instruments,
Wright set off with two

colleagues on an 11,000-mile
tour of the western parks.

They would keep at it for
4 consecutive years.

At each park, Wright kept
a daily log

of the animals he saw.

He also gathered information
from his conversations

with people in the field,
park rangers

and superintendents,
local rangers and hunters,

old-timers who remembered
what it was like back

in the 19th Century,
anyone with information

about the state of wildlife in
the parks, to augment what he

and his fellow
researchers were observing

with their own eyes.

Everywhere he went, Wright
discovered disturbing evidence

that the equilibrium of
nature was out of kilter.

Coyotes, wolves, and mountain
lions, even badgers and hawks

and owls were routinely
shot as unwelcome predators.

Buffalo were kept in
corrals like domestic cows.

Elk, deer, and antelope
were being fed hay

in the wintertime.

At Yellowstone, he learned
that rangers had been ordered

to go to the nesting grounds
of white pelicans and stomp

their eggs because it was
feared that grown pelicans

deprived anglers of
too many fish.

The bears meanwhile were
treated like pets, fed scraps

of food at staged events
each evening near the parks'

garbage dumps or along the
roadsides, where they were

encouraged to beg for
handouts from tourists.

MAN AS GEORGE MELENDEZ WRIGHT:
The average citizen expects

more intelligence from a
bear than he has any

right to expect.

He goes on the assumption that
if he feeds a bear two sticks

of candy and does not want
to give it a third he is

the one to say,
"No, no," and he believes that

the bear is to be accused
of an unforgivable breach

of etiquette if it takes all
the candy out of his hand

and perhaps takes
the hand with it.

COYOTE: Wright eventually
published two reports

proposing a
radically new policy.

Unless threatened with
extinction within in a park,

each native species, including
the hated predators, he wrote,

"should be left to carry
on its struggle"

"for existence unaided."

MAN: When he said that "the
rare predators shall be"

"protected in the national parks"

"in proportion that they are
persecuted everywhere else,"

that was... that
was revolutionary.

COYOTE: Wright also called for
the end of winter feedings,

closing the bear dumps,
no more stocking streams

with nonnative fish, expansion
of some park boundaries to

accommodate grazing habits
and changes in a multitude

of practices that
had become ingrained.

Most park managers
were unconvinced,

but Horace Albright, intrigued
by the surveys, established

a new Wildlife Division in 1933

and named
George Melendez Wright,

only 29 years old, as its chief.

MAN AS GEORGE MELENDEZ WRIGHT:
If we destroy nature blindly,

it is a boomerang which
will be our undoing.

Consecration to the task of
adjusting ourselves to the

natural environment so that
we secure the best values from

nature without destroying
it is not useless idealism.

It is good hygiene
for civilization.

MAN: Part of the changing
relationship with national

parks as we evolved as
a nation went

from scenery to science.

The scenery was obvious.

It was overwhelming,
it was stunning.

The science is not so obvious.

Science embraces mystery,
and it begins to look into

the future in ways that most
people can't preserve.

It asks questions that most
people don't ask, and it says,

"We need to hold on to these
places, and I can't give you"

"precise reason why, but the
reason will come along later,"

"and if we don't have them,
we'll never be able to explore"

"the answers to the
questions we'll be asking."

So they hold the answers to
questions we have not even

yet learned to ask.

[Frogs croaking]

WOMAN: I think it's the people
that pressure the government

to do the things
that benefit them.

I don't think most politicians
sit there and say, "Now what's"

"the best thing I can do
for the people today?"

But they hear from their
constituents, and that's what

makes up their minds,

and the people really
love their parks.

They mean a lot.

There's an emotional
bond there, and they'll

fight for them.

WOMAN: There are no other
Everglades in the world.

Nothing anywhere else
is like them.

Their vast, glittering
openness wider than

the enormous visible round of
the horizon, the sweetness

of their massive winds
under the dazzling blue

heights of space.

The miracle of the light
pours over the green and brown

expanse of saw grass and
water, shining and slow-moving

below, the grass and water
that is the meaning central

face of the
Everglades of Florida.

It is a river of grass.

Marjory Stoneman Douglas.

COYOTE: For centuries,
the fresh waters of Lake

Okeechobee had flowed slowly
and yet unimpeded across

a vast swath of southern
Florida toward the Gulf

of Mexico, a seemingly endless
saw grass marsh punctuated by

cypress swamps and mangrove
forests, creating

an environment unlike
anything else on earth.

Its highest elevation is never
more than a few feet above sea

level, yet its rich landscape
supports more than a thousand

different species of plants
from royal palms

and smooth-barked
gumbo limbo trees

to delicate orchids
and bromeliads.

It is the only place where
alligators and crocodiles can

be found living side by side,
and it is a critical breeding

ground for wading birds beyond
counting: egrets and ibises

and herons of all sizes,
roseate spoonbills,

and the wood stork, the only
stork native to America.

GREENE: It's magnificent when
you stand there and look out

on the vastness of it all.

Well, they call it a swamp,
but it's really not a swamp

because the water moves ever
so slowly, but it moves.

COYOTE: Because of its
trackless impenetrability,

the Everglades became
something of a sanctuary

for people, too.

In the 1800s when the Seminole
Indians were driven out

of Florida, small groups
escaped and found refuge deep

in the cypress trees
and saw grass along

with the Miccosukee Tribe and
hundreds of runaway slaves.

Later when the fashion in
women's hats made the white

feathers of egrets more
valuable per ounce than gold,

plume hunters and poachers
hid out in the Everglades

and slaughtered the birds
there with impunity.

A few game wardens who dared
try to stop them were killed,

too, but a greater threat soon
imperiled not just the birds

but the Everglades itself.

Napoleon Bonaparte Broward,
elected governor on a slogan

of "Drain the Everglades" was
merely one in a long series

of Florida politicians and
promoters who built their

careers on the idea of turning
the vast wetland into

a developer's promised land.

They had divided up the
Everglades into lots that they

were selling to the
suckers from up north.

They were selling land
by the gallon.

COYOTE: As mechanized dredges
began digging drainage canals,

real estate speculators
began offering land

at $1.00 an acre,
then $20, then $50,

even though some of it
was still underwater.

A succession of real estate
booms swept south Florida.

Much of the northern
Everglades was turned into

sugar cane plantations,
vegetable fields,

and cattle ranches.

The towns sprouting up along
the coastline began taking

more and more land in
the interior as their

populations swelled.

Then in the late 1920s in the
Miami area, a small movement

began, hoping to save as
much of the remaining

Everglades as possible.

The Florida Federation of
Women's Clubs had already

preserved a 120-acre parcel
called Royal Palms and given

it to the state.

That wasn't enough for
Ernest Coe, a landscape

architect who had recently moved
from Connecticut to Miami

and was shocked to learn that
rare orchids, exotic birds,

and so much else in the
Everglades were being

systematically destroyed.

He decided to make it his
life's work to create a much

larger national park.

Coe threw himself into the
cause, convening meetings,

firing off petitions,
relentlessly pestering

politicians, and persuading
others to join his crusade.

WOMAN AS DOUGLAS: I can't say
I've spent many years and months

communing with the Everglades.

To be a friend of the
Everglades is not necessarily

to spend time wandering
around out there.

It's too buggy, too wet,
too generally inhospitable.

I suppose you could say the
Everglades and I have the kind

of friendship what
doesn't depend on constant

physical contact.

I know it's out there,
and I know its importance.

Marjory Stoneman Douglas.

COYOTE: Marjory Stoneman
Douglas soon became

the movement's most powerful
public voice, even though,

as she was the first to admit,
she seemed an unlikely

champion of the cause.

She wouldn't voluntarily say,
"Well, let's go have a picnic

in the Everglades," or, "Let's
go boating in the Everglades."

She just wasn't that much
of an outdoor person really,

but she taught people
about the Everglades.

She would go anywhere
anytime to make a speech

about the Everglades.

COYOTE: A graduate of
Wellesley College, Douglas had

come to Florida in 1915 to
get a divorce after a brief

and unhappy marriage,
then enlisted in the Navy

in World War I and sewed
with the Red Cross in Europe.

"I wanted my own life in
my own way," she said.

She became the "Miami Herald"
society reporter but found

herself more interested in the
struggles for women's rights

and racial justice, earning a
reputation for her feistiness

and colorful writing.

When Ernest Coe turned her
attention to the Everglades,

Douglas quickly agreed
with him that its unique

combination of water,
wildlife, and plants needed

federal protection, but at
the national level, many park

supporters were unsure whether
the Everglades, lacking

dramatic mountains,
waterfalls, or geysers,

was worthy of being
a national park.

"A swamp is a swamp,"
one leading

conservationist said.

The National Park Service has
spent the first 15, 20 years

of its own existence promoting
the West, and suddenly,

the Everglades comes along,
and the National Park Service

says, "But wait a minute.
Where's the scenery?"

"Where's the Canyons?
Where's the mountains?"

"Why are people going
to come here?"

COYOTE: Frederick Law Olmsted
Jr., who like his father had

helped define the national
park idea, was dispatched to

Florida to study the request.

"The quality of the scenery,"
he conceded, "is to"

"the casual observer somewhat
confused and monotonous,"

"perhaps rather subtle for
the average person in search"

"of the spectacular."

Then at the end of a long day,
Olmsted found himself near the

nighttime roost of thousands
of ibises and herons.

MAN AS OLMSTED:
After dusk, flock after

flock came in from their
feeding grounds and settled

in the thickets close at hand.

It was an unforgettable sight
that ranks high among the

natural spectacles of America.

MAN: Somebody can tell you
about a place, and you can nod

your head and say, "Yeah, boy,
that's interesting."

Someone can show you a
photograph or a painting of it

and say, "Man, that's
something," but until you're

actually there, until you're
in the midst of the place,

where all your senses
are involved, that's

the transformative moment,
that's when you say,

"This is a place,
and I am part of it."

COYOTE: Skeptical Park Service
leaders, including

Horace Albright, made a series
of official trips to decide

whether to support the idea.

So did George Melendez Wright,
director of the new

Wildlife Division.

Both found it easier to
conduct at least part of their

investigations from the air,
floating above the Everglades

in the Good Year Blimp.

Both were astonished
by what they saw.

"Unless this area is quickly
established as a national park,"

Wright warned,
"the wildlife there will"

"become extinct."

RUNTE: And then
Horace Albright got in a blimp,

went over the Everglades,
looked down, saw the wildlife,

saw the alligators and all the
ibises and all the wonderful

bird life, and said,
"You know, this is a beautiful

"place, and I think this could
be a park," and began to

change his mind.

And in the process
of changing his mind,

it changed
the Park Service's mind.

COYOTE: Finally, Ernest Coe
and Marjory Stoneman Douglas'

efforts paid off.

A bill to create Everglades
National Park passed Congress

by the narrowest of margins.

For the first time in history,
a park had been created solely

for the preservation
of animals and plants

and the environment
that sustains them.

GREENE: It was an enchanted
spot, and to me, that was the

closest thing to heaven on
earth, and I spent almost

every weekend down in the a
little bitty boat cruising

Florida Bay and looking
at the birds.

We didn't fish, we didn't
speed around in a boat.

We just floated around
and felt like we were

all part of it.

Us and the birds.

And the fish that we could
see on the bottom the water

was so clear.

We were just being
there part of it all.

I think that's what a
national park is all about.

It gives people breathing
room, it gives people

a tranquil atmosphere.

It gives them an opportunity
to be a part of nature.

You're just part of it all,
just part of the rest of it.

[Frogs croaking]

ROOSEVELT: Today for the first
time, I have seen Glacier Park.

Perhaps I can best express to
you my thrill and delight by

saying that I wish that every
American, old and young,

could have been with me.

The great mountains,
the glaciers, the lakes,

and the trees make me long
to stay here for all

the rest of the summer.

To say from standpoint
of scenery alone that...

MEN, SINGING: Where seldom
is heard a discouraging word

And the skies are
not cloudy all day

COYOTE: In Franklin Delano
Roosevelt, the national parks

had found their greatest
friend in the White House

since the presidency of his
cousin Theodore Roosevelt

a generation earlier.

F.D.R. had developed his own
deep love of the outdoors

during his boyhood on
his wealthy family's

country estate.

Adding historic sites and
battlefields to the national

parks had been simply a
first step in the larger

reorganization F.D.R. and his
administration contemplated,

but a much bigger issue
demanded his attention.

The Great Depression had
thrown 1 out of every 4

American wage
earners out of work.

Factories shut down, farms
were foreclosed, unemployed

young men, concerned that they
had become a burden to their

families, roamed the countryside

by the hundreds of thousands.

Many Americans wondered
where their next meal

would come from.

In some cities, animals in
the zoo were shot and the meat

distributed to the poor.

Everyone in the United States
was affected.

MAN: The welfare at that
time was called relief.

It was sad when I found out
the source of that money.

It was from the paupers' fund,
so that was hard to take,

but, hey, it kept us going.

COYOTE: Juan Lujan had grown
up in west Texas near the tiny

town of Redford on
the Rio Grande.

LUJAN: By the time I graduated
from high school, that was

the depth of the Depression,
so that prompted me and my

mother to seek something,
and one of the social workers

advised her about the CCCs.

COYOTE: The TVA, the PWA,
the WPA, the CWA.

Among the alphabet soup of
programs Roosevelt's New Deal

created to stimulate
the economy and combat

unemployment was one
especially dear to

the president's heart because
it incorporated his concern

for conservation.

He had pushed it through
Congress in less than a week

after being inaugurated.

The Civilian Conservation
Corps put young men to work

in national forests, state
parks, and national parks,

clearing brush and replanting
forests, fighting fires,

building visitor shelters
and ranger cabins, improving

campsites and trails.

Horace Albright was part
of the early planning,

and because the Park Service
already had a long list

of projects ready to go,
it was given a lead

role in the new program.

Within 3 months, 1,000 CCC
camps were up and running

with nearly 300,000 young men
at work in them, sending money

back home, helping
millions of Americans.

LUJAN: Prior to the CCC,
I didn't know anything

about national parks except
what I read in my history

books, that they
existed somewhere.

I had never been to a
national park before.

COYOTE: Juan Lujan was
dispatched to help develop

what would become Big Bend
National Park in Texas.

LUJAN: We were housed
in barracks,

we ate in a mess hall just
like the military,

and we had a certain discipline.

We'd get up early in the
morning, do calisthenics.

That was before breakfast,
and you'd better be

at the calisthenics.

Otherwise, KP, kitchen patrol.

COYOTE: For many, it was their
first time away from home

and their first real encounter
with the natural world.

Burton Appleton from Brooklyn
was sent to Glacier National

Park in northwest Montana.

I once visited my brother
in Hackettstown, New Jersey,

which was maybe 50 miles
west of the Hudson River.

I had an aunt who lived
out on Long Island,

Eastport, Long Island.

Maybe that was 50 miles.

I can't remember
visiting anyplace else.

Those are the only two times
that I think I had left

Brooklyn, New York.

We'd been on the train for
about 4 days, and we were

awakened at a stop, and I
looked out the window of my

upper berth, and there was
this mountain with snow

in April, and of course,
in Brooklyn, we had a bluff

maybe in Prospect Park we
could walk up, but nothing

like that in my past.

Another thing I remember is
that I was out there by myself

one day with my Kodak box
camera, and I... to this day,

I don't believe it.

A deer walked up to me
within 10 feet maybe.

I stood stock still.

I couldn't believe that,
and I took a picture, and as

soon as I clicked the camera,
the deer turned tail an ran,

and I have that photo.

COYOTE: Claude Tyler, at age
16 the eldest of 6 boys and

2 girls in a desperately poor
farm family from Blossom,

Texas, was dispatched to the
barren wastes of Death Valley

National Monument.

TYLER: We loaded on a truck
somewheres in that area

and went to Death Valley,
and it was pretty warm then,

but in June, it
really did get hot.

Fifth day of June,
it was 120 in the shade.

270 foot below sea level.

Well, it was hot, and us
boys kind of got toughened

to it, I think.

We all got a good suntan.

COYOTE: Tyler was then sent to
Lassen Volcanic National Park

in northern California,
a peak more than

10,000 feet above sea level.

TYLER: I'd never been to
the mountains before.

It was all new to me.

Kind of short-winded the
first time I went up there.

Ha ha ha!

Get up above the tree line,
why, you get short of breath,

and I would make pictures and
send them home and tell them I

was doing all right and this
is where I'm at, and Mother

would write and say,
"Well, you be careful

on those mountains."

We got paid $30 a month of
which a whole $5.00 was ours.

The rest of it went home,
and $25 a month seems like

nothing, but it made
a big difference.

Money and dignity was
important because whenever you

need a shirt and you buy it,
if you bought it with your own

money, that's a good feeling.

ROOSEVELT: It's very good
to be here at these

Virginia CCC camps.

I wish I could see them
all over the country.

I hope that all over the
country they're in as fine

condition as the camps that
I have seen today.

I wish that I could take a
couple of months off from the

White House and come down here
and live with them because I

know I'd get full of
health the way I have.

LUJAN: We almost
thought he was God.

We really liked him.

Because at the same time,
there were many other programs

having nothing to do with the
CCC, but there was progress,

there was work,
there was money in

the community circulating.

COYOTE: Besides the
conservation work they did,

the men also participated in
organized sports, hobby clubs,

discussion groups, and
classes meant to prepare them

for getting jobs once
they left the camps.

At Big Bend, Juan Lujan helped
lay the foundations for new

park buildings and then,
because he spoke both Spanish

and English fluently,
became a museum guide.

He was also put to
work teaching his

less-educated comrades.

LUJAN: Most of the enrollees
in that particular camp had

not graduated from high school.

Many of them had little or
no education, and those of us

that had some, we volunteered
to teach classes, and some

of them wanted to learn how
to read and write Spanish.

I taught some of those, too.

COYOTE: Juan Lujan would go
on to college, something his

mother always wanted him to do,
eventually earn a master's

and then a doctoral degree
and continue teaching others

for the rest of his life.

After his time at Lassen,
Claude Tyler returned

to Blossom, Texas.

TYLER: I went back
to school for a year.

I went over to the school house,
and the teacher wanted

me to go from a... I had only
finished about the fifth

grade, and he looked over
some of the things that I took

in CC camps and correspondence
courses, and he put me

in the first year in high
school, and so I went one year

in high school,
and that's the last

of the education that I had.

It's because my parents
hadn't really got up

on their feet real good.

I went back to CC camps and
stayed two terms in there.

APPLETON: I was not a very
good high-school student.

My grades were not all that
good, and I am convinced to

this day that the only reason
I was able to matriculate

at the New York State College
of Forestry was that I

convinced the registrar or
the dean of admissions of my

experience in the CCC.

That's what the CCC did for me.

COYOTE: Over the course of
the Depression, more than

3 million men would find work at
one time or another with the

Civilian Conservation Corps.

They would build more than
97,000 miles of fire roads

in national forests, combat
soil erosion on 84 million

acres of farmland, and plant
3 billion trees, more than one

half the total reforestation
accomplished

in the nation's history.

During that time, some
$218 million would be pumped

into projects solely within
the national parks,

including trails and buildings
that remain to this day.

RUNTE: The Depression
is a golden age

because the National Park
Service is a federal agency,

and it's going to get all of
Franklin Delano Roosevelt's

"let's rebuild the
nation" dollars.

And the budgets of the
National Park Service soar,

and as the National Park
Service looks at projects that

could put people to work,
Congress agrees,

and Franklin Delano
Roosevelt agrees,

and the National Park Service

suddenly finds itself swimming
in money relative to what it

had in the 1920s.

ROOSEVELT: We are definitely in
an era of building today,

the best kind of building,

the building
of great public projects

for the benefit of the
public and with the definite

objective of building human
happiness at the same time.

TYLER: Looking back on it now,
I believe that it helped a lot

of families have a better life.

I realize now that it was for
the benefit of the economy,

too, but I believe that a lot
of families might not have

been able to survive
if it hadn't have been

for that program.

And I got to see a lot of the
world that I wouldn't have

seen before that if I hadn't
have done to the CC camps.

Mount Lassen was
outstanding all right.

Death Valley was just hot.

I don't know whether I'd
call that a favorite memory,

but I can remember it.

[Clattering]

SCHULLERY: The national parks
have always been managed

pretty much by the
values of their time.

It was still spectacle.

Wild beauty was defined on
superficial levels that had

very little to do with
wildness and how wildness

actually works.

Oddly enough, it's the
scientists who had the most to

do with redefining beauty.

MAN AS GEORGE MELENDEZ WRIGHT:
In the end, the National Park

Service either will be praised
for intelligently conserving

the last fragments of
primitive America or condemned

for failure to hold
to the real purpose.

George Melendez Wright.

WOMAN: I think his passion
really shows through

in his writing.

He was very persuasive.

He could convince people who
really were against his ideas,

he could bring them along.

He was a joyous person.

He was very comfortable in
his own skin, not egotistical

but very confident in himself.

He was a small person even
by Hispanic standards

but with a big heart, mind,
and presence.

COYOTE: By 1936, George
Melendez Wright was married

with a growing family,
but he was busier

with is work than ever.

The Wildlife Division he had
started within in the Park

Service now had 27 biologists
promoting Wright's vision that

park policies had to take
the animals and plants into

account, not just the tourists.

His personal interest in
Yellowstone's trumpeter swans,

the largest and most rare of
American water fowl, which had

been reduced by hunting to
a mere handful of breeding

pairs, had turned into a
personal crusade to save them

from extinction.

Wright solicited the help
of local rod and gun clubs,

lobbied state fish and game
commissions and other federal

agencies, even donated some of
his own money again to create

a special wildlife refuge that
ultimately brought the swans

back from the brink.

MAN AS GEORGE MELENDEZ WRIGHT:
Sometimes while I'm watching

these birds, the illusion of
the untouchability of this

wilderness becomes so strong
that it is stronger than

the reality, and the polished
roadway becomes the illusion,

the mirage that
has no substance.

COYOTE: In February,
the traveled to the newly

authorized Big Bend National
Park in southwest Texas,

where the Chisos Mountains
rise out of the Chihuhuan

Desert and the Rio Grande cuts
through a series of dramatic

canyons separating the
United States from Mexico.

With Roger Toll, another
rising star within the Park

Service, Wright was part of a
two-nation commission studying

the possibility of an
international park straddling

both sides of the border.

His fluency in Spanish and his
outgoing disposition helped

him make friends with
his Mexican counterparts.

After the meeting, he and
Toll headed for home.

Near Deming, New Mexico,
an oncoming car blew a tire

and crashed head-on
into their vehicle.

Both men were killed.

George Melendez Wright was 31.

Without him,
the Park Service's interest

in wildlife waned.

By the end of the decade,
of the 27 biologists who had

once been under his
supervision, only 9 were left.

MAN: Scenery without
wildlife is scenery.

Wildlife is a component
of the grander scene.

Without that wildlife,
you don't have

a national park.

George Melendez Wright was
a savior of wildlife

in America's national parks,
but more importantly,

George Melendez Wright
is a savior

of the national park ideal.

ROOSEVELT: I'm very keen about
travel, not only personally...

You know that... but also travel
for as many Americans as can

possibly afford it because those
Americans will be fulfilling

a very desirable objective of
our citizenship, getting to

know their own country better,
and the more they see of it,

the more they will realize
the privileges which God

and nature have given
to the American people.

COYOTE: Throughout
the Depression,

President Roosevelt made a
number of well-publicized visits

to the national parks, glorying
in the chance to be outdoors

in the midst of such stunning
landscapes, even if the polio

that had destroyed his legs
confined him to the backseat

of his touring car, and he
cheerfully encouraged his

fellow citizens to
follow his example.

ROOSEVELT: I decided today
that every year ought

to be National Parks Year.

There is nothing so American
as our national parks.

The scenery and wildlife are
native, and the fundamental

idea behind the parks is native.

It is in brief that the
country belongs to the people.

They are not for the rich alone.

COYOTE: Despite hard times,
the number of park visitors

continued to rise during the
1930s from roughly 3 million

a year at the start of the
decade to 15.5 million

in 1939, and Roosevelt was
intent on setting aside more

places for them to visit.

He turned his attention to
the northwestern corner of

Lake Superior off the coast
of Minnesota and Michigan

and the largest freshwater
island in the world, creating

Isle Royale National Park.

The president also used
his authority under

the Antiquities Act to bypass
Congress altogether and create

a string of national monuments.

Some of them would eventually
be elevated to park status,

including Joshua Tree in
southern California, named

for the distinctive plants
Mormon pioneers believed

looked in silhouette liked the
Prophet Joshua raising his

arms to beckon them forward.

The Dry Tortugas, a remote
cluster of 7 tiny islands

70 miles off the
southernmost tip of Florida.

On one island sits the
largest brick fortification

in the world, Fort Jefferson,

used during the Civil War
as a prison.

Capitol Reef in Utah, where
a hundred-mile fold

in the earth's crust exposes a
panoply of differently colored

rock formations
the Navajo Indians called

The Land of
the Sleeping Rainbow.

And off the coast of
Santa Barbara,

the Channel Islands,

a crucial breeding ground for
hundreds of animal species,

including the California brown
pelican, whose nesting place

had virtually disappeared
everywhere else in the western

United States, an oasis of
undeveloped land just a few

miles from the explosive urban
growth of greater Los Angeles.

All clear!

ROOSEVELT: We should remember
that the development of our

national park system over a
period of many years has not

been a simple bed of roses.

It has been a long and fierce
fight against many private

interests, which were
entrenched in political

and economic power.

MAN: This is an allocation
out of the total sum...

COYOTE: No one was more
willing to take on entrenched

interests than the president's

irascible Secretary of the
Interior Harold Ickes,

a self-described old curmudgeon.

A Chicago lawyer and former
Republican stalwart known

equally for his explosive
temper and his fierce devotion

to New Deal policies, he had
become one of Roosevelt's

closest and most
controversial advisers.

"The meanest man who ever
sat in a cabinet office

"in Washington,"
Horace Albright said,

"and the best Secretary
of the Interior we ever had."

Ickes fought battles
on every front.

One of his first acts was
to abolish the department's

segregated lunchrooms.

Then he told the national
parks in the South to simply

ignore local Jim Crow laws

requiring separate
facilities for blacks.

At Virginia's Shenandoah
National Park, signs

segregating campgrounds
or picnic areas were

quietly taken down.

Ickes make more enemies by
repeatedly proposing the

creation of a Department of
Conservation that would put

national parks, national
forests, and all other natural

resources under the same
administrative control... his.

Congress repeatedly refused,
but he continued to have

Roosevelt's ear and trust
and was tirelessly effective

in advocating new parks
regardless of the opposition.

In 1937, Roosevelt
and Ickes entered

into a park controversy that
had been raging for 30 years.

On the Olympic Peninsula west
of Seattle, majestic mountains

trapped the moist Pacific
winds, which dropped

160 inches of rain a year,
nurturing verdant rain forests

that contained the largest
specimens in the world

of Douglas fir, red cedar,
western hemlock,

and Sitka spruce.

For centuries, it was the
homeland of native tribes like

the Makah and Quinault,
the Hoh and Skokomish.

Over the years, more than
10 different bills had been

introduced in Congress to
make Mount Olympus National

Monument into a National Park.

Each one was defeated, caught
in a seemingly endless battle

between the Forest Service
and the Park Service.

Meanwhile, loggers were
approaching the last virgin

stands of rain forest.

"Left to the care of the
Forest Service," Harold Ickes

contended, "such places
suffered the same fate as"

"a pig in the stockyards."

"All that is left," he said,
"is the squeal."

POPE: Harold Ickes was one of
the few Interior Secretaries

of the 20th Century who was as
big as the parks because Ickes

was the first Secretary of the
Interior who really engaged

the fact that you could save
a place once somebody had

aspirations on it.

The early parks were
created before anybody big

and powerful had aspirations,
and when San Francisco,

which was big and powerful,
drew its bead on Hetch Hetchy,

San Francisco won,
Hetch Hetchy lost.

Ickes said, "Wait a minute."

"Big, powerful people may
have their aspirations"

"on the Olympics,
but they don't have to win."

COYOTE: The president decided
to have a look for himself,

but his visit was arranged
by the Forest Service and its

allies in the lumber and pulp
mill industries, all of them

intent on convincing Roosevelt
that a national park would

ruin an already
suffering local economy.

No detail was overlooked.

They excluded all
Park Service officials from

the invitation list, scheduled
a massive logging train to

rumble past the president's
lodge during his breakfast,

a not-so-subtle reminder of
the jobs at stake, and they

moved the sign marking the
National Forest boundary to

give the impression that
a heavily logged area,

now several square miles
of burned stumps, was not

on federal land.

"I hope the son of a bitch
who's responsible for this is"

"roasting in hell," Roosevelt
said, not realizing that he

was actually looking at a
national forest and his guide

was the forest supervisor.

When Roosevelt learned
about the deception, it only

increased his commitment
to protect the forest.

On June 29, 1938, with
the president's passionate

support, Congress converted
the National Monument to

Olympic National Park and gave
Roosevelt the authority to

expand its boundaries,
which he soon did, saving two

of the most threatened valleys
by stripping an additional

187,000 acres away from
the Forest Service.

MAN: When the weekend comes
around, I get restless.

At night, I bring maps of
Mount Rainier into bed with me

and fall asleep looking at them.

When it's time to depart for
a trip, I cannot stay in bed

any longer and get up
before anyone else.

I can't wait to go hiking again.

Iwao Matsushita.

COYOTE: Among the millions
of people who

took President Roosevelt's
advice to visit national parks

were Iwao Matsushita and his
wife Hanaye, Japanese citizens

who had moved to
Seattle in 1919.

Each Sunday, the Seattle
Camera Club, which he had

helped start, organized
outings to nearby

Mount Rainier National Park,
where Matsushita not only took

still photographs but also
created home movies and kept

a small journal to
record their adventures.

[Projector running]

MAN AS IWAO MATSUSHITA: Beyond
these high valleys, you can

see the craggily white
mountains, whose peaks are

showing through a thick fog.

It is a view worthy of
a sumi-e painting.

Looking to the north, you can
see Mount Rainier appearing

majestically like our king
of mountains Mount Fuji.

I sit on a patch of heather.

I marvel at the speed
with which clouds are

changing their shape.

I crouch by a stream fed by
the remaining snow to enjoy

a cold drink of water
and open up my sushi.

COYOTE: By the mid-1930s,
Iwao and Hanaye had visited

the park more than 100 times,
drawn to the place they called

Holy Mountain.

MAN AS IWAO MATSUSHITA:
Everyone here is having a good

old time, and no one had
a reason to frown.

Like a paradise of our
own world and time.

Looking up, I feel as though
the great snowy mountain were

an affectionate mother to
all the people playing

on her slopes.

COYOTE: Farther to the south,
another Japanese immigrant was

finding similar joy
and inspiration

in another national park.

MAN: Success or failure
is not my aim in life.

Whether I be a flake of
snow or only a drop of dew,

I do not care.

I wish only to paint with
gratitude to nature in my

heart and with
sincerity in my brush.

This is my future,
this is my biography.

Chiura Obata.

COYOTE: Chiura Obata had
arrived in the United States

in 1903 at age 17, a promising
young painter whose original

intention was to stay only
briefly in America before

going on to Paris to continue
his career, but he soon set

down roots in San Francisco,
creating some of the only

on-site sketches of the
destruction wrought by the

Great 1906 Earthquake, making
a name for himself in the bay

area's international art
community, even co-founding

the first Japanese-American
baseball team on the mainland.

Then in 1927, he visited
the high Sierra

and John Muir's Yosemite.

MAN AS CHIURA OBATA: In the
evening, it gets very cold.

The coyotes howl
in the distance.

In the mid-sky,
the moon is arcing.

All the trees are
standing here and there...

[Coyote howls]

And it is very quiet.

[Water running]

You can learn from
the teachings within

this quietness.

Some people teach by speeches,
some by talking, but I think

it is important that you
are taught by silence.

WOMAN: I think for my
grandfather it was not only

that he was able to paint
this landscape, but for him,

it became a spiritual
inspiration, as well, and he

would describe it that this
was "the greatest harvest"

"for my whole life and future
in painting," and not only did

he paint for art that he would
bring home but also even just

little postcards.

He sent several postcards back
to his children back home.

One of them reads, "Gyo-Chan,
the lovely moon is gone."

"It went to bed early to sleep."

"Grow big and shine more."

COYOTE: For two months, he
and two other artist friends

tramped the high country,
taking in all the park had to

offer, exposing Obata to what
he called "not just shizen,"

or nature, "but dai-shizen,
great nature."

Obata's Yosemite images drew
huge crowds when they were put

on exhibit and rave
reviews from the critics.

"To see our native beauty
spots through the eyes

"of a foreign artist of high
rank," one of them wrote,

"is to find new charm
in our own land."

By the 1930s, Obata had been
asked to join the art faculty

at the University of
California, and every summer,

he and his family would return
to Yosemite, where he gave

lectures, taught outdoor
sketching classes to the

tourists, and made his annual
pilgrimage to a special mountain

spring, whose clear water he
collected for use in making

his paints throughout
the rest of the year.

MAN AS CHIURA OBATA:
I dedicate my paintings first to

the great nature of
California, which has always

given me great lessons,
comfort, and nourishment,

second to the people who share
the same thoughts as though

drawing water from one
river under one tree.

My paintings, created by the
humble brush of a mediocre man,

are nothing but
expressions of my

whole-hearted praise
and gratitude.

COYOTE: By 1940, thanks in
great part to the national

parks they had come
to cherish as their own,

both Chiura Obata
and Iwao Matsushita

had decided
the United States was home,

even if its laws at
the time prohibited them from

becoming citizens because
they had been born in Japan.

When the company he worked
for ordered him back to Tokyo,

Matsushita resigned.

The Depression would make
finding a new job difficult,

but he and Hanaye wanted
to stay close to their

Holy Mountain.

MAN AS IWAO MATSUSHITA:
I enjoy my life in Seattle.

I have so many happy memories
with nice people, both

Japanese and Americans.

I have visited Mount Rainier,
my lover, more than 190 times.

I cannot leave Seattle when I
think of the beautiful views

of Mount Rainier.

Iwao Matsushita.

MAN: Fortunate he is who may
see Mount McKinley against

the summer midnight sky, the
lush fern forests of Kilauea,

the white jubilance
of Yosemite's waters,

and the somber rock and surf
of Acadia National Park.

To record and interpret
these qualities for others,

to brighten the drab moods
of cities, and build high

horizons of the spirit on the
edge of plain and desert,

these are some of the
many obligations of art.

Ansel Adams.

COYOTE: In 1938, a book
arrived at Harold Ickes'

office, entitled "Sierra
Nevada: the John Muir Trail."

It was filled with stunning
images of the mountainous

Kings River Canyon region of
the southern Sierra, captured

by an aspiring photographer
named Ansel Adams.

This was his first book of
landscapes, and since he knew

that Ickes was interested in
making the area a national

park, Adams had sent it along
with his personal compliments.

Ickes took it to the
White House to show

President Roosevelt, who
liked it so much he quickly

appropriated it for his own.

Ansel Adams was on his way to
becoming the most influential

photographer for the cause of
national parks since

William Henry Jackson's images
of Yellowstone had helped

persuade Congress to
create the world's

first park in 1872.

There is this unending
argument about whether art can

affect human affairs, and
I think Ansel is one great

example of how it did.

Muir is another example.

Muir's writings absolutely
had effect, and it wasn't just

propaganda writings.

It was his evocative
descriptive writings

of the Sierras.

Same with Ansel.

Ansel used his photographs in
this movement and used them

very effectively.

COYOTE: The sensitive only
child of a patrician

San Francisco family, Adams
had first encountered nature

during a family
trip to Yosemite.

There, seeing the
waterfalls and the rock faces,

El Capitan,
The Three Brothers, Half Dome,

he was transfixed.

"We should not casually pass
them," Adams wrote later,

"for they are the very heart
of the earth speaking to us."

"I knew my destiny," he added,

"when I first
experienced Yosemite."

In the 1920s when he made
two pack trips into the

Kings Canyon Country, it ignited
in him the conviction that

the place was just as
inspirationally spectacular as

Yosemite and equally deserving
of federal protection.

It was an old dream.

John Muir had fought for
it and failed in the 1890s.

Then Stephen Mather had
taken up the cause

with the same result.

Now Adams and the Sierra Club
believed they had an ally who

shared the dream and had the
power to make it come true...

Secretary of the
Interior Harold Ickes.

"If I had my way about
national parks," Ickes said,

"I would create one without a
road in it, a place where man"

"would not try to
improve upon God."

Ickes saw in Kings Canyon
his chance to create a new

kind of park,
a wilderness park in which

roads, hotels, and other large
developments would be banned.

He thought it should be called
the John Muir Kings Canyon

Wilderness Park, and he threw
himself into the fight against

the forces that instead wanted
dams, irrigation projects,

grazing, timber harvesting,
and elaborate tourist resorts.

Through a series of shrewd
maneuvers, he turned one

private interest group against
the other, waged ceaseless

battle against the Forest
Service's efforts to retain

control over the land,
and persuaded most

of the major conservation
groups not to abandon their

support because of
the compromises he felt

he had to make.

"Ickes was," one opponent
of the park said,

"overambitious, egocentric,
ruthless, unethical,"

"and highly effective."

In the final moments before
the vote in Congress, the name

was simplified,
dropping any reference

to John Muir and wilderness.

On March 4, 1940, President
Roosevelt signed the law

creating Kings Canyon
National park.

Because it was a road-less park
and because of his disability,

Roosevelt would never be able
to see Kings Canyon in person.

Instead, he contented himself
with following John Muir's

trail through the photographs
and words of Ansel Adams.

MAN AS ANSEL ADAMS: The dawn
wind in the high Sierra is not

just a passage of cool air
through forest conifers,

but within the labyrinth of
human consciousness becomes

a stirring of some world magic
of most delicate persuasion.

Here are forces familiar
with the eons of creation,

contemplating the flow of life
and of change through living

things, each of them tied to
cloud, stone, and sunlight.

We may make new discoveries
about ourselves.

COYOTE: In the fall of 1941,
Ickes decided Adams could be

of even greater assistance.

He put him on the Interior
Department's payroll at $22.22

a day and told him to bring
back photographs of all the

parks for prominent display
in the capital city.

Adams said it was one of the
best ideas ever to come out

of Washington and happily
packed up his station wagon to

set out on his assignment.

Off and on for the next
8 years, he would compile

thousands of images of the
national parks and visit every

one of them except, to his
great regret, the Everglades.

[Radio static]

ANNOUNCER: This bulletin
from the NBC Newsroom

here in New York.

SECOND ANNOUNCER:
We've just had a flash...

ANNOUNCER: Action
against Pearl Harbor defenses.

SECOND ANNOUNCER: saying that
a state of war exists

with the United States.

THIRD ANNOUNCER: That the
Japanese have attacked

the United States Naval Base.

SECOND ANNOUNCER: Now we
begin to see through things,

it's obvious that the... the,
uh, Imperial General's staff

has precipitated an attack
and now announces

that that attack is war.

COYOTE: But just a few months
after Adams began his travels,

the Japanese attacked Pearl
Harbor, and the United States

was thrust into
another World War.

Now Adams pursued his project
with even greater passion.

To those who questioned
whether his artistry could be

put to a better purpose
in wartime, he had

a simple reply.

"I believe my work," he wrote,
"relates most efficiently to"

"what we are fighting for."

Like everything else in
American life, the national

parks now found themselves
subordinated to the all-out

effort to defeat Japan
and its ally Germany.

The CCC camps closed down as
the men who had been working

on trails and park buildings
became soldiers and shipped

out overseas.

Park budgets were cut to
a quarter of their

pre-war levels.

Just as in the First World War,
pressures mounted to open

them up to timber cutting,
mining, and grazing.

Harold Ickes did his best
do minimize the damage.

MAN AS ANSEL ADAMS: When
World War ll began, there were

strong pressures in many
circles to close the national

parks for the duration with
the thought that no one needs

a vacation in wartime.

Ickes disagreed with this,
stating that in times

of national stress and sorrow
the people needed precisely

what the national
parks could offer.

Ansel Adams.

COYOTE: When Ickes informed
Roosevelt that a proposed

bombing range would
endanger the breeding grounds

of the rare trumpeter swan
that George Melendez Wright

had worked so hard to
preserve, the president dashed

off a quick note to
his Secretary of War

countermanding the decision.

"The verdict is for the
trumpeter swan and against

"the Army," Roosevelt wrote.

"The Army must find a
different nesting place."

In 1941, the year leading up to

America's entry into the war,
a record 21 million people had

visited the national parks.

The next year, the figure
dropped to 9 million, then to

6.8 million in 1943.

All across the system,
many park rangers changed

uniforms and went off to war.

"Poor, old National Park
Service is in a bad way,"

a now retired
Horace Albright wrote to his

successor after being informed
of all the cutbacks,

but the parks still
had a role to play.

At Mount Rainier, units
of what would become

the 10th Mountain Division were
taught how to survive in high

altitudes and cold weather.

War planners also realized
that national parks could

provide much needed rest
and recuperation

for battle-weary soldiers.

The Navy took over the swank
Ahwahnee Hotel in Yosemite

for a convalescence center.

Rest camps went up in Sequoia,
Carlsbad Caverns,

the Grand Canyon,

and Mount McKinley
National Park in Alaska was

transformed into an
army recreation camp.

Soldiers stationed in the
Aleutian Islands could fish,

hike, ski, skate, and relax.

In 1943, 1.6 million
soldiers found

momentary solace and enjoyment
in a national park,

1/4 of the total visitation.

That same year, Ansel Adams
interrupted his photographic

survey and went to the
Owens Valley of California

in the eastern shadow of
Mount Whitney to document

something entirely different.

After the surprise attack
on Pearl Harbor, President

Roosevelt signed an executive
order requiring all people

of Japanese descent living on
the West Coast, even those who

were United States citizens,
to be uprooted from their

homes and sent to
internment camps

for the duration of the war.

"We must prosecute this war
with all ruthless efficiency,"

Adams wrote after he had
photographed the Manzanar

internment Camp, "but we must
be certain that, as the rights"

"of the individual are the
most sacred elements of our"

"society, we will not allow
passion, vengeance, hatred,"

"and racial antagonism to cloud
the principles of universal"

"justice and mercy."

WOMAN: Dear Husband, I'm
a little too much tired,

but I'm sure I can live
here all right.

Just imagine a mountain camp.

When the sky's clear,
we will see our holy

Mount Rainier, I suppose.

I will write you
again very soon.

Lovingly yours, Hanaye.

COYOTE: Because he had worked
for a Japanese company,

Iwao Matsushita was arrested
and taken away from his wife

in the first hours
after Pearl Harbor.

Hanaye was put in a temporary
detention center near Seattle,

where she tried her best
to boost the spirits of her

husband far away in
an internment camp

in western Montana.

WOMAN AS HANAYE MATSUSHITA:
Dear Husband, after severe

rain, the sky became clear,
and we saw Mount Rainier over

the hill yesterday
for the first time.

There will actually be a
day when you'll be released

and we'll be able
to rest peacefully.

Once in a while, I dream
about running around the base

of Mount Rainier.

Remember the times we hiked
through the mountain together?

It all seems like a dream.

MAN AS CHIURA OBATA: The sudden
burst of Pearl Harbor

was as if the Mother Earth on
which we stood was swept by

the terrific force of a
big wave of resentment

of the American people.

Our dignity and our
hopes were crushed.

COYOTE: Friends of Chiura Obata
had pleaded with the

federal government that the
artist posed no security

threat and even suggested that
he be taken instead to his

beloved Yosemite.

The request was denied.

Obata and his family were
forced to go to a camp

in Topaz, Utah.

To help keep his and his
fellow prisoners' minds off

what he called
"the intolerable sin" of their

incarceration, Obata opened
an art school at the camp

and continued his own
sketching and painting.

HILL: So here he was
basically with a community

of fellow Japanese.

"Yes, we are in this desert,
but don't just look"

"at the dust and the ground,
don't just be depressed"

"about what's happening."

"You can somehow lift
your spirits by looking"

"at the mountains that
are surrounding us."

They were not the same
mountains that he had

experienced in the Sierras
of course, and yet,

he felt comforted.

He would use that word.

"I still feel comforted and
nurtured by great nature."

And he wanted other people
to understand this, as well.

COYOTE: One of his paintings,
"Moonlight Over Topaz,"

was given to the president's
wife, Eleanor Roosevelt,

in thanks for her speaking
out for fair treatment

of Japanese Americans.

Years later in remembrance
of his personal ordeal, Obata

would paint "Glorious Struggle,"
the image of a tree

in Yosemite's high Sierra,
whose own struggle to survive

seemed to give him strength
and hope in his darkest hour.

One subject he loved to
paint again and again

was the sequoia.

For him, they were
this great vertical

line that connected heaven and
earth, and for him, he saw

the life of a person in these
trees and that no matter the

storms and trials of life that
these trees survive with great

dignity and great strength.

MAN AS CHIURA OBATA: In such
times, I heard the gentle

but strong whisper of
the Sequoia gigantean.

"Hear me, you poor man."

"I've stood here more than
3,700 years in rain, snow,"

"storm, and even mountain fire,
still keeping my thankful"

"attitude strongly with nature."

"Do not cry, do not spend your
time and energy worrying."

"You have children following."

"Keep up your unity.
Come with me."

Chiura Obata.

COYOTE: In the midst of
the war, a letter arrived

at the White House for
President Roosevelt.

MAN: My dear Mr. President,
many years ago,

I purchased some
30,000 acres of land

in Jackson Hole, Wyoming,
confidently expecting

that the federal government
would gladly accept

the land as a gift to be added
to its national park system.

15 years have passed.

The government has not
accepted the property.

I have now determined to
dispose of the property,

selling it if necessary in
the market to any

satisfactory buyer.

Very sincerely,
John D. Rockefeller Jr.

COYOTE: The longest
festering fight in the history

of the parks was
about to erupt into

a full-scale battle.

Back in the 1920s,
Horace Albright had shown

Mr. and Mrs.
John D. Rockefeller Jr.

The flat, sage-brush-covered
plain called Jackson Hole

and explained to them his
dream that all of it,

the valley floor as well as

the mountains, would one
day be preserved, but when

Congress had created Grand
Teton National Park in 1929,

it left the valley alone and
set aside only the mountains.

Meanwhile, Rockefeller
continued anonymously buying

up ranches and homesteads in
the valley with the intention

of donating it all for the
park's expansion, but Wyoming

politicians, who had learned
of Rockefeller's scheme,

did everything they could to
thwart his plan, not wanting

Washington to tell them what
they could and could not do

with their land.

The state's sole congressman
even introduced a bill calling

for the complete abolition
of Grand Teton National Park

despite the fact that the
mountains were not part

of the dispute.

MAN AS HORACE ALBRIGHT:
I must confess I get pretty

discouraged at times in
trying to understand some

of the people out there.

It almost makes one weep,
not for one's self

because after all what
difference does it make to

an individual what happens
to Wyoming, but one weeps

for Wyoming itself.

Horace Albright.

COYOTE: Albright was a private
citizen but more determined

than ever to see
his dream fulfilled.

In 1943 with Congress still
unwilling to enlarge the park,

he and Rockefeller and
Harold Ickes decided that their

only hope lay in the president's
unique authority under

the Antiquities Act to create
a national monument.

Rockefeller's letter to
Roosevelt was meant to prod

the president into action.

It worked.

On March 15, 1943, Roosevelt
signed an executive order

establishing Jackson Hole
National Monument, placing

221,610 acres of federal land
on the eastern border of

Grand Teton National Park
under Park Service control.

In Wyoming, the response was a
declaration of political war.

The president, one senator
said, had committed

"a foul, sneaking,
Pearl Harbor blow."

A journalist wrote that
Roosevelt's action followed

the general lines of
Adolf Hitler's

seizure of Austria.

MAN: When this happened,
it was a big uproar,

lots of talk,
lots of talk, and the ranchers

were totally opposed, and
they thought their grazing

rights were being destroyed.

COYOTE: Wyoming's governor
threatened to use state police

against any National Park
official attempting to assume

authority in the new monument.

Some Forest Service employees
gutted their ranger stations

before turning them over to
the Park Service, and hoping

to provoke a confrontation and
draw attention to their cause,

a group of armed local
ranchers, led by the aging

movie star Wallace Beery,
defiantly herded 500 head

of cattle across the
monument without a permit.

MAN: I was born here in
Jackson Hole in 1912.

There was pretty strong
resentment about the manner

in which the monument had been
created, and we had rifles,

and we drove cattle across the
Gros Ventre River and across

the monument land, and
Wallace Beery was right

at the... right at the head.

Ostensibly to shoot anybody
who might try to stop us.

No one tried to stop us,
but we did get

a lot of attention.

COYOTE: In Washington,
Wyoming's delegation pushed

through a bill abolishing the
national monument and turning

the land back to
the Forest Service.

Roosevelt vetoed it.

The state of Wyoming then
went to court, claiming that

Jackson Hole lacked the
objects of scientific or

historic interest necessary
for national monument status.

Postcards showing a ramshackle
outhouse were circulated

with a message saying,
"These are some"

"of the historic
structures here."

"This is one known to have
been occupied several times"

"by Horace M. Albright."

A federal court dismissed the
case, saying it was a dispute

between the executive and
legislative branches which

the judiciary would do well
to steer clear of.

In 1945, Roosevelt died
and World War ll ended,

but the battle of
Jackson Hole roared on.

MAN AS HORACE ALBRIGHT:
Dealing with Wyoming is like

dealing with the Russians.

You never get anywhere
by trying to cooperate.

Horace Albright.

COYOTE: "This was a battle,"
the retired Albright said,

"I had to get into."

He lobbied his Republican
friends like former president

Herbert Hoover and marshaled a
campaign by major conservation

groups to rally their members
to tell Congress that

the American people also
had a stake in what

happened in Wyoming.

A study was published showing
that retail sales taxes

in Jackson Hole had doubled
and the region's overall

economy had been strengthened
by the boost in tourism,

but the local political
climate remained decidedly,

stubbornly anti-park.

Finally in 1950 after it
became clear that the bitter

battle would never end in
unconditional surrender by

either side, a compromise
was worked out.

Teton County would be
reimbursed for lost property

taxes, existing grazing
rights were grandfathered in,

and the migratory elk herd
would be managed by both the

Park Service and the state,
which would be permitted to

oversee supervised hunts.

In return, the bulk of Jackson
Hole National Monument became

part of an enlarged
Grand Teton National Park,

now 3 times its original size.

Included in it was the 30,000
acres of private land

John D. Rockefeller Jr. had been
trying so hard to give away.

MURIE: So it's not
just the spectacular.

It's the foreground.

You have to have foregrounds
to wilderness, you have to

have the highlands and middle
lands and the lowlands,

and a huge piece of northern
Jackson Hole is saved from

strip malls, saved from
what happened to... to... down

in the town of Jackson.

COYOTE: Tucked away in the
compromise that finally ended

the battle of Jackson Hole was
another concession:

"According to this provision,
future United States presidents"

"are barred from ever again
using executive action to"

"establish new
national monuments"

"in the state of Wyoming except"

"by the express permission
of Congress."

Wyoming, the state with the
distinction of having the

world's first national park,
Yellowstone, and the first

national monument,
Devil's Tower, now had another

distinction... the only state
where the Antiquities Act

is null and void.

HANSEN: I was one who was very
critical of the Rockefellers

and did all I was able to do
to try to thwart their plans,

and I'm grateful now that I
wasn't successful because I

have to appreciate as everyone
else does the uniqueness

and the beauty of this area.

Thank God for the Rockefellers.

I've told them on more than
one occasion that I'm glad

I lost that fight.

WOMAN: For all the
bureaucracy, for all the red

tape, for all the arguments
about public policy,

our national parks are first
and foremost places of love,

and I think each American can
look into their own hearts

and tell you, "This is my
national park," and it might

be the Great Smokies,
it might be Yosemite.

For our family,
it's Grand Teton.

This is the range of our memory.

My great-grandfather brought
my grandfather, who brought

my father, who brought
us as children.

It's the last place my
mother came before she died.

It's also the last place my
brother took his family before

he succumbed to lymphoma.

I'll never forget.
We were at the Murie Ranch,

and Steve and Ann
and the girls were walking

toward the Snake River.

It was pink light, alpenglow,
and Steve stopped,

and you could see the
reflections of the Tetons

in one of the pools, and he
turned to Ann and the girls,

and he said,
"Mark this moment."

And then 5 elks went across
the Snake River, and I watched

this family of 5 return.

These are the stories that
allow us to go home and face

not only our lives
but even our deaths.

That's the power of these
remembered landscapes.

DUNCAN: The Declaration of
Independence began with this

incredible statement that
all men, all human beings

are created equal.

We've been chasing that ideal,
those words for the rest

of our history, often too
slowly, never quite reaching

it even yet, but that's the
statement that we're chasing.

The national park idea,
which is the best idea we had

after we became a nation,
didn't start that way

with a bold statement,
grand ideals that we're

trying to chase.

It began sort of experimentally,

improvisationally, and it's
only as we've moved through

time that we have added this
notion of what a park is

and what's allowed in it and
what's not allowed in it,

what we should be drawing
from it, but like the notion

of freedom, we've always been
arguing over it, we've always

been trying to grapple with
its meaning, and always trying

to on the one hand remain true
to the ideal but leaving it up

to each succeeding generation
to either push it a little bit

farther or broaden
it a little bit more.

COYOTE: In the midst
of Franklin Roosevelt's

presidency, the world renowned
contralto Marian Anderson had

been denied the
opportunity to perform in

Constitution Hall,
the 4,000-seat auditorium

controlled by the Daughters
of the American Revolution,

because of the
color of her skin.

At the urging of
Eleanor Roosevelt, Harold Ickes,

who had once been the head of
the NAACP in Chicago, quickly

issued Anderson permission to
sing at a different venue,

the Lincoln Memorial,
a recent addition

to the national park system.

The concert was free
and drew a crowd of 75,000

of all races and creeds.

HAROLD ICKES: Genius, genius
draws no color line, and so it

is fitting that
Marian Anderson should raise her

voice in tribute
to the noble Lincoln,

whom mankind will ever honor.

Miss Marian Anderson.

COYOTE: After being introduced
by Ickes, Anderson stepped to

the microphone and
began her program.

My country, 'tis of thee

Sweet land of liberty

Of thee we sing

Land where my fathers died

Land of our pilgrims' pride

From every mountainside

Let freedom ring

Ave Maria

ICKES: In this great
auditorium under the sky,

all of us are free.

When God gave us this
wonderful outdoors and the sun

and the moon and the stars,
he made no distinction of race

or creed or color.

[Anderson continues
singing "Ave Maria"]

POPE: You start out with
places that were created

in the late 19th Century
because nobody wanted them,

like Yellowstone.

You go through places like
Hetch Hetchy, which were

sacrificed because
somebody did want them.

You go to the Olympic
Peninsula, and the guys who

wanted to cut the logs lose.

You go to Jackson Hole,
and the state of Wyoming

desperately fights the
creation of Grand Tetons

and then puts it on its
license plates, and finally,

you end up with history.

So what... what, a European
would ask, does all this have

in common, and I think what it
all has in common is these are

the places where Americans
encounter who they

are and are home.

These are the places that
make this continent our home.

This is what enables Americans
to inhabit this whole place,

where after all very few of
us originally came from.

ANDERSON: Ave Maria

[Cheering and applause]