My sister got the DVD set of The National Parks: America’s Best Idea
for Christmas, and my family has been taking it in a chunk at a time over the past couple of weeks. As is always true of Ken Burns, the cinematography is spectacular and the parks all have their best sides on display.
The 12 hour series is probably a 60/40 split between a history of the park system and an exploration of what the parks mean in the greater context of Americans. By the 12th hour, to be honest, I would have preferred more of a 80/20 split. Mainly because, while the parks are part of our national psyche and are necessary places of rest and rejuvenation, there are only so many ways to say that without becoming repetitive, and the repeats started around episode four. By the sixth night, Burns was reduced to recounting family trips of the people originally interviewed for other purposes over the course of the show, and while I appreciate that five generations of anything in one family is noteworthy, seeing family photos of strangers doesn’t really do anything to bring the parks into perspective for me.
Philosophical expounding aside, the history of the park system is well presented and fascinating to watch. Did you know, for example, that the Calvary protected Yellowstone and Yosemite in early years because Congress refused to appropriate money for upkeep or pass laws to protect the parks from development? The African American brigade patrolling Yosemite combated illegal grazing within park boundaries by expelling the shepherds on the eastern side of the 15,000 acre park and their sheep on the other. Burns includes not only the battles involved in establishing the parks themselves, but also in how they were managed and the conflicts between use and preservation. The series also touches on the role that the Park Service plays in maintaining the national monuments, forests, lake shores and seashores, as well as battlefields, memorials and historic locations.
All in all… definitely worth watching. I doubt I’ll be buying it myself, but I certainly enjoyed the series.
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