Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh
Speaker 1: and there's Chuck and Jerry's here. So the trio put together,
Speaker 1: uh makes the stuff you should not. That's right. And
Speaker 1: there are people working near my house. So if you
Speaker 1: hear my dogs today or construction sounds, I'm sorry. Well,
Speaker 1: you know what, Chuck, if we do hear that, we
Speaker 1: will assume that they are the Olympia Marmot making some noise,
Speaker 1: or maybe a gray wolf in yellow Stone after all
Speaker 1: these years, and we're just gonna pretend. Okay, Okay, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's gray wolves living upstairs, reintroduced into your house, into
Speaker 1: my home successfully. Yeah, yeah, sure, they've definitely got the
Speaker 1: local wildlife on guard. Yeah, we needed a new apex
Speaker 1: predator because Emily was getting tired of it. I'll bet she, Well,
Speaker 1: she's a is the business person. I can imagine she
Speaker 1: doesn't have time to be an apex predator around the
Speaker 1: house too. So, Chuck, we are talking today about national parks,
Speaker 1: and it's really appropriate that we're talking about them today,
Speaker 1: although it would have been even more appropriate if we
Speaker 1: had been talking about them two days ago. But let's
Speaker 1: just skip that little part. As a matter of fact,
Speaker 1: we may even edit it out. I don't want to
Speaker 1: be a downer this early in the episode. You know
Speaker 1: was two days ago. Two days ago was the one
Speaker 1: hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the founding of yellow Stone
Speaker 1: as a National park. Not just the first national park
Speaker 1: in America, the first national park in the entire world. Wow. Wow, Wow,
Speaker 1: isn't that cool? That is cool? And it did date
Speaker 1: didn't strike me when I was looking over that stuff. Hmm.
Speaker 1: Thanks for the reminder. March first, eight seventy two. Um,
Speaker 1: and the reason why I point out that it was
Speaker 1: the first one in the world is because, um, there's
Speaker 1: this uh, this writer named all A. Stagner, who's known
Speaker 1: as the Dean of Western writers. But he said this.
Speaker 1: He said that national parks are the best idea we've
Speaker 1: ever had. Absolutely American, absolutely democratic. They reflect us at
Speaker 1: our best rather than our worst, which is his His
Speaker 1: quote has been kind of picked up. You'll often see
Speaker 1: like articles about the National park system as America's best idea. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he did well. His hair told him too. It's not
Speaker 1: entirely his old hair cut, which he lost and now
Speaker 1: looks weird without and he said, shut up, I'll not
Speaker 1: call it something else. Stay in line, don't make me
Speaker 1: make you set another fire. Can I'll grow over your face.
Speaker 1: So um. It's frequently called America's best idea, not just
Speaker 1: because it was a good idea, and it was America's idea,
Speaker 1: but because it was very quickly picked up, as we'll
Speaker 1: see by countries around the world. And now it's a thing.
Speaker 1: It's a genuine thing to take land and set it
Speaker 1: aside and say nope, nobody can come do anything with
Speaker 1: this land. You can't cut the trees down, you can't
Speaker 1: hunt the poor beavers off of it, you can't um,
Speaker 1: you can't like steal the fish. You can't do anything
Speaker 1: except come and enjoy it, and please use the garbage
Speaker 1: cans when you do. Come and enjoy it. And that's
Speaker 1: the point. That's what national parks are all about. That's right,
Speaker 1: and thank goodness, because this is the United States, a
Speaker 1: great country in many ways. But if we had not
Speaker 1: done this, that would assuredly be a w hotel sitting
Speaker 1: in the middle of Sequoya National Forest or on the
Speaker 1: rim of the Grand Canyon. The Hilton Garden in at
Speaker 1: the rim of the Grand Canyon, right, or quizzically a
Speaker 1: holiday in express that's nowhere near an airport. You said quizzically,
Speaker 1: I thought you're about to say a quiz no. Sounds
Speaker 1: like yeah, that too, I'd be okay with the quiz nos. Uh.
Speaker 1: So I know that you're not much of an outdoorsman,
Speaker 1: but you you do like to look at it. I
Speaker 1: like to be out doors. I'm just not like I
Speaker 1: sit outside. I know about, you know, extracting what I
Speaker 1: can from nature from my own personal gain on the
Speaker 1: room of the Grand Canyons that are pretty nice to you.
Speaker 1: I bet I met more like my own prawn on
Speaker 1: my own energy to recharging the old batteries kind of thing. Like,
Speaker 1: I get it. I get it. I just don't spend
Speaker 1: as much time outdoors as you, right. Uh. And you know,
Speaker 1: I've done quite a bit of traveling through national parks
Speaker 1: in my life, and especially one summer um post college,
Speaker 1: my best friend and I took a big two months
Speaker 1: jaunt around the country, visiting places like Bryce Canyon and
Speaker 1: Zion and Arches in Yosemite and the Grand Canyon and
Speaker 1: White Sands, and it's just all as far and wide
Speaker 1: as we could go. Basically never hit the Pacific Northwest,
Speaker 1: but we we traveled many a mile and uh. One
Speaker 1: of the great things about national parks is that you
Speaker 1: can camp wherever you want to. Uh. They do have
Speaker 1: their like designated camp grounds and things like that where
Speaker 1: it's pretty competitive to get spots. But the great thing
Speaker 1: is you can just hike in or drive around and
Speaker 1: find a place to camp. It's called dispersed camping. And
Speaker 1: unless there are some specific rule prohibiting that, which there
Speaker 1: may be, as long as you follow the rules like
Speaker 1: no fireworks, no firearms, uh and sometimes no fire's period.
Speaker 1: Definitely don't shoot at a pile of fireworks with your firearm.
Speaker 1: They really frown. Oh, don't do that. But but it's
Speaker 1: great and it's kind of like one of the great
Speaker 1: things about national parks is you can explore and and
Speaker 1: find your own place if you don't like to sort
Speaker 1: of do because they can get very touristy if you
Speaker 1: like to go off the beaten path quite literally exactly
Speaker 1: dispersed camping. Of course, there's some bureaucratic term for that.
Speaker 1: Well let's talk history a yeah, let's because um, we
Speaker 1: covered some of this in our Fantastic John Mirror episode,
Speaker 1: which is fantastic and worth listening to if you haven't
Speaker 1: heard it. Um. But even before John Murr came along
Speaker 1: in about the eighteen fifties, So this is super old timing,
Speaker 1: um you send it seems to have been and this
Speaker 1: is taking out Lewis and Clark's um stuff. They apparently
Speaker 1: passed just north of Yosemite and missed it, um, but
Speaker 1: they had all sorts of like reports and discoveries and
Speaker 1: all that stuff. We did an episode on that too,
Speaker 1: also fantastic. That kind of got the country jazz back
Speaker 1: east about what was out west. But apparently, if you're
Speaker 1: talking about national parks, the real inspiration for them was
Speaker 1: when a group called the Mariposa Battalion uh stumbled into
Speaker 1: the Yosemite Valley in eighteen fifty one. That's right, uh,
Speaker 1: And Yosemite is one of the most beautiful places on earth,
Speaker 1: and that's where they were. Uh. You know. The job
Speaker 1: of the mari Posts of Battalion, there's really no their
Speaker 1: way to say, it was to disperse and ransack Native
Speaker 1: American villages and and kill them if they wanted to,
Speaker 1: and just basically uh lay waste to whatever they saw
Speaker 1: and say this is now ours. And they were doing this,
Speaker 1: and then they stopped one day and went, holy cow, uh,
Speaker 1: look it where we are. Look at this impossibly tall waterfall.
Speaker 1: Look at these granite cliffs, Look at these three thousand
Speaker 1: year old giant Sequoia trees. You know, can we at
Speaker 1: least appreciate this for a moment? And they did. And
Speaker 1: there was a doctor, a young doctor named Lafayette Bunel
Speaker 1: in the battalion and said, you know what, this place
Speaker 1: is so amazing. Maybe we should take a break from
Speaker 1: ransacking Native American villages and we should name it. Yes,
Speaker 1: And they really wanted to punctuate their misunderstanding of Native
Speaker 1: Americans in the various Native American cultures they encounter, so
Speaker 1: they said, well, let's name it. What Apparently, this tribe
Speaker 1: that we're in the midst of removing from this land
Speaker 1: is called the Yosemite. And it turns out that tribe
Speaker 1: was not at all called the Yosemite. They were the
Speaker 1: Awa Nichi, and the Awa Niche called that place that
Speaker 1: they ended up calling Yosemite Awani, meaning gaping mouth like place.
Speaker 1: Yosemite means something totally different, doesn't it. It means they
Speaker 1: are killers. It makes me wonder if like as they
Speaker 1: were approaching. They were just going Yosemite, Yosemite, and they
Speaker 1: were like, oh, well, that must be who they are,
Speaker 1: when in fact they were just calling out, like you
Speaker 1: guys are killers coming for us? Exactly. It was like,
Speaker 1: I mean, that's how to read that, right, That's that's
Speaker 1: how I took it. Yes, boy, So that's that's where
Speaker 1: the name Yosemite came from. UM. And it's really I mean,
Speaker 1: it's definitely worth saying. You can. We could actually do
Speaker 1: an entire episode just on how national parks were um
Speaker 1: part and parcel with Indian reservations UM in the in
Speaker 1: the early nineteenth century or sorry, mid late nineteenth century. Um.
Speaker 1: They were. They were both developed at about the same time,
Speaker 1: and they were both kind of developed on the same
Speaker 1: premise that this is now white settler's land, um, and
Speaker 1: you needed to move and you should move over here
Speaker 1: because now we want this beautiful land for ourselves to enjoy. UM.
Speaker 1: So it's it's you just can't get around it. It's
Speaker 1: just part of the history of national parks. Fortunately. UM,
Speaker 1: it's really come a long way and in some cases
Speaker 1: full circle to where now there's a much greater effort
Speaker 1: among the Park Service to be like, hey, um, you
Speaker 1: know how you used to live here. Well, we're actually
Speaker 1: having a lot of trouble managing this lane. Could you
Speaker 1: come and advise us on this and hopefully get a
Speaker 1: job doing that kind of thing. So there's definitely a
Speaker 1: much greater turning towards whereas before it was not just
Speaker 1: a turning away from it was turning out. It makes
Speaker 1: me wonder if there was has ever been a push
Speaker 1: to rename Yosemite Alwani National Park or even Awa Nichi,
Speaker 1: maybe Alwani since that's what they called it, Like, I
Speaker 1: think that would I think the a that sounds awesome,
Speaker 1: Alwani National Park. I imagine it would meet the usual
Speaker 1: resistance when anytime something like that comes up these days.
Speaker 1: But well, yeah, it's gonna run smack dab into the
Speaker 1: argument of what about yo Samiti Sam? What are you
Speaker 1: gonna do with him? Let's call him? I want to Sam.
Speaker 1: I guess So beautiful park though, Uh this was you know,
Speaker 1: word got around that there's this beautiful place that people
Speaker 1: can visit, uh, and people started taking people there. A
Speaker 1: guide started, you know, people that want to go see it.
Speaker 1: They would wagon train them up on on horseback and
Speaker 1: get them out there, uh, and then smacked up in
Speaker 1: the middle of the Civil War. And you know, there
Speaker 1: are a bunch of people along the way that really
Speaker 1: like John Murror certainly one of them, and Teddy Roosevelt,
Speaker 1: who will cover uh kind of briefly again, But there
Speaker 1: are a lot of people along the way. He did
Speaker 1: some kind of remarkable made some remarkable moves that led
Speaker 1: to ultimately the creation of national parks. And one of
Speaker 1: them was a senator in California named Uh. I don't know,
Speaker 1: it's pronounced cons or conness. It's C O N and E. S. S.
Speaker 1: And he introduced a bill that said, hey, Yosemite is great,
Speaker 1: why don't we set aside about a little more than
Speaker 1: sixties square miles of this valley for public use? And
Speaker 1: they said that's a great idea. So it became the
Speaker 1: first Uh, well, I don't know about the first, but
Speaker 1: it was a state park, uh, signed enshrined by Abraham Lincoln,
Speaker 1: not a national park at this point. But the deal
Speaker 1: was you can never make this uh, you can never
Speaker 1: like sell off part of it to private interests. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of um, a lot of argument push
Speaker 1: back on the idea that Yosemite was the first. Everybody
Speaker 1: knows Yellowstone was actually the first, but some people say no,
Speaker 1: it wasn't. It wasn't Yosemite or Yellowstone. It was actually
Speaker 1: Hot Springs National Park in Arkansas was the first land
Speaker 1: set aside by the federal government for protection, all the
Speaker 1: way back in eighteen thirty two. The difference is is
Speaker 1: um it wasn't actually designated as a national park until one.
Speaker 1: So that's why Hot Springs get short shrift. I just
Speaker 1: wanted to add a little pedantry to this whole gym.
Speaker 1: So Yellowstone all right, At this point Yosemite is still
Speaker 1: state park. Yellowstone. That was about the Yellowstone comes along
Speaker 1: as if you know someone someone built it uh in September.
Speaker 1: In fact, September eighteen seventy, that was an expedition traveling
Speaker 1: UH through Montana in what is now Yellowstone National Park.
Speaker 1: And they were like, hey, guys, how can we like
Speaker 1: divide up this land, like we can make a ton
Speaker 1: of money of logging and mining and tourism. And there
Speaker 1: was one person that stood up, It was an attorney
Speaker 1: named Cornelius Hedges and said, gentleman, I have a different idea.
Speaker 1: How about we do what they did in Yosemite, and
Speaker 1: we make this a state park or or set aside
Speaker 1: this land for public use, and somehow did not get
Speaker 1: murdered in his sleep, and it would have become a
Speaker 1: state park probably had it not been for the fact
Speaker 1: that Yosemite borders what is now three different states at
Speaker 1: the time, three different territories, Wyoming and Montana and Idaho.
Speaker 1: So who steps in at this point the FEDS, specifically
Speaker 1: a president, right, yeah, Ulysses S. Grant. He signed a
Speaker 1: Yellowstone Park Protection Act, a little on the nose and
Speaker 1: not even an acronym, but it were um and this
Speaker 1: is where the first national park was established. He said
Speaker 1: that the headwaters of the Yellowstone River is hereby reserved
Speaker 1: and withdrawn from settlement, occupancy, or sale, and dedicated and
Speaker 1: set apart as a public park or pleasuring ground for
Speaker 1: the benefit right for the benefit and enjoyment of the people.
Speaker 1: And so that was March one, eighteen seventy two, when
Speaker 1: he signed that into law, and Yellowstone became America and
Speaker 1: the world's first national park on record. I think that's
Speaker 1: a good first stopping point. I agree, alright, So we're
Speaker 1: gonna go figure out what pleasuring ground meant to grant
Speaker 1: and we'll be right back right after this shock. So
Speaker 1: what's your vote? Pleasure and Ground. Uh that Lake of
Speaker 1: Whiskey in the Big Rock Candy Mountain song, That's what
Speaker 1: I think is Pleasure in Ground. Oh what a great song.
Speaker 1: Oh it's a great song. I love it. The Bulldogs
Speaker 1: I'll have rubber teeth. So Yellowstone is now the first
Speaker 1: national park in the United States, and kind of from
Speaker 1: the beginning, you know, it's funny like when you look
Speaker 1: at sort of the the loggerheads that environmentalists and uh,
Speaker 1: certain political parties in this country and then certain political
Speaker 1: idealists in this country all kind of running up against
Speaker 1: one another. Like it was doing that from the beginning
Speaker 1: as far as privatization, federalization, uh, preserving land or not
Speaker 1: mining and logging and things like, like they've always been
Speaker 1: arguing about this stuff. Yeah, And I mean, to be fair,
Speaker 1: we're like entering a time of like deep American prosperity,
Speaker 1: like right at the at the precipice of the Gilded Age, um,
Speaker 1: where like there was this idea that however, you could
Speaker 1: make money, go make money and make as much as
Speaker 1: you can because there are such things as rags to
Speaker 1: riches stories all over the place. People would buy books
Speaker 1: about rags of riches story so there were and when
Speaker 1: you couple like that whole impulse that was just kind
Speaker 1: of socially acceptable with the idea that there was actually
Speaker 1: nobody in charge of the national parks at this time.
Speaker 1: There's no coherent federal agency charged with overseeing the national parks. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: all of a sudden you had tons of hucksters showing
Speaker 1: up and guides who like were locals and they're like, well,
Speaker 1: I guess I'm gonna go be a guy at Yellowstone
Speaker 1: now and charging whatever they wanted. Um. And it started
Speaker 1: to get like I guess there was a lesson with
Speaker 1: Niagara Falls, where by the middle of the nineteenth century,
Speaker 1: Niagara Falls was a straight up tourist trap that was
Speaker 1: very in this is very important too, being naturally ruined
Speaker 1: also by a bunch of energy companies that were using
Speaker 1: it for hydroelectric power to without any regulation whatsoever. And
Speaker 1: Niagara Falls um had to be rescued from the brink
Speaker 1: of destruction. Uh and and and put under federal control
Speaker 1: and regulated at least state control. I'm not sure, um.
Speaker 1: But it served as like a cautionary tale for places
Speaker 1: like Yellowstone happily, I guess in a weird way. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And so at the time it was not you know, ultimately,
Speaker 1: as we'll learn, all of this ended up under the
Speaker 1: purview of the Department of Interior, but not at this point.
Speaker 1: The government did try the privatization route at first and said,
Speaker 1: all right, there's a firm called the Yellowstone or they
Speaker 1: name themselves this, uh, the Yellowstone Park Improvement Company, and
Speaker 1: we're gonna they're gonna get the contract. They're gonna run
Speaker 1: this place. They can manage the tourist spots, they can
Speaker 1: harvest and hunt as they see fit. And uh, you know,
Speaker 1: like you said, everyone was really worried that was going
Speaker 1: to get out of control. And another gentleman steps in
Speaker 1: at this point, a General Philip Sheridan, who was a
Speaker 1: Civil War general for the Union Army and he was
Speaker 1: fighting in the Indian Wars on the Great Plains but
Speaker 1: loved Yellowstone and said, here's what I'm gonna do. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna send the army in and I'm gonna dispatch them
Speaker 1: and they're gonna take over management. Uh, And they did so.
Speaker 1: From eighteen eighties six to nineteen sixteen, they were basically
Speaker 1: in charge of like protecting the park from illegal loggers, miners, poachers. Uh.
Speaker 1: And that's actually I read why the Park Service their
Speaker 1: official ranger uniforms bear resemblance to old timey cavalry uniforms,
Speaker 1: including the campaign hat, because it's a an omager, a
Speaker 1: nod to the cavalry units that that protected the parks initially.
Speaker 1: Oh did you see where they got that sickly colored green. No?
Speaker 1: I didn't. It's a really distinct I mean, I just
Speaker 1: call it National for a Service green. It's really it's distinct.
Speaker 1: You know. What it might be. They might have surveyed
Speaker 1: every single shade of green in every DAN park in
Speaker 1: America and then blended it all together and that's what
Speaker 1: came out. Well, what's funny is like I've done all
Speaker 1: this camping all my life, and I've always seen like
Speaker 1: those for a Service trucks and then the park rangers
Speaker 1: and things everywhere. And when you see them and as
Speaker 1: well as we'll see later, you know, they also look
Speaker 1: after things like national monuments. Now, so you can be
Speaker 1: like in the middle of downtown Atlanta near the King
Speaker 1: Center and you can see like a park ranger and
Speaker 1: green park truck riding around like, are you lost, sir?
Speaker 1: Or is it like is there a convention nearby? Is
Speaker 1: this cosplay? Yeah, it's not cosplay. It's one of our
Speaker 1: great park rangers. I'm sorry. I didn't realize you were
Speaker 1: going to stand up for them in front of everybody
Speaker 1: on the pod. I love green, but that's one shade
Speaker 1: of green that still can't wrap my head around because
Speaker 1: it's all the shades of green, I guess. So hey,
Speaker 1: can I say one thing that popped up to me
Speaker 1: while we were researching this stuff? Um, just the the
Speaker 1: whole idea of like that, that tension that push and
Speaker 1: pulled between setting aside land for the good of everybody, um,
Speaker 1: at the at the expense of private interests who are
Speaker 1: trying to extract it for their own individual gain mostly. Um,
Speaker 1: that's a huge that's it's still ongoing today, and it
Speaker 1: has been ever since we first started setting aside land,
Speaker 1: and it happens elsewhere in other parts of the world too.
Speaker 1: And it occurred to me, Chuck that, like the people
Speaker 1: who give capitalism a bad name, capitalism isn't inherently evil,
Speaker 1: but the people who make it seam evil are like
Speaker 1: the most full throated worshipful capitalists of all the ones
Speaker 1: who use like capitalism as an excuse to um to
Speaker 1: just take as much as you can, like the same
Speaker 1: people who would like kill the golden goose to sell
Speaker 1: it to a restaurant to serve for dinner. They're just
Speaker 1: that short sighted. And it occurred to me that like
Speaker 1: capitalism and stewardship are not necessarily mutual exclusive, that they
Speaker 1: can go totally hand in hand. It's just we've been
Speaker 1: listening to the wrong branch of capitalists all these years.
Speaker 1: The people who are like, no, you take and take
Speaker 1: and take, you make, you maximize profits at any cost.
Speaker 1: That's the point of capitalism. That's not inherently the point
Speaker 1: of capitalism. Like you can say, no, there's limits to
Speaker 1: this um. We need to save this stuff for the future.
Speaker 1: There's different ways to um to use these things for
Speaker 1: the good of all people, not just the people who
Speaker 1: can afford to take and build minds or logging operations,
Speaker 1: and like, if we can get to a point where
Speaker 1: we're not listening to those people anymore, we say, to
Speaker 1: hell with those people. We're gonna go in this different way,
Speaker 1: kind of a stewardship version of capitalism. I think we
Speaker 1: could continue on indefinitely like that and make money for longer.
Speaker 1: It's a long view. It's a macro view exactly. And
Speaker 1: ladies and gentlemen, that was a genuine Josh Clark soapbox moment.
Speaker 1: We need a jingle for that. And did we ever
Speaker 1: get our stupid colon jingle or have we been just
Speaker 1: saying like insert colon jingle and speining last even No,
Speaker 1: because I don't know when we listen to our like
Speaker 1: quality assurance listens, I mean it might come after that.
Speaker 1: I haven't been hearing him. I've never noticed it either.
Speaker 1: All right, Jerry, you're on notice. Yeah, all right, So
Speaker 1: now we get to the part and we're gonna breeze
Speaker 1: through this a little quicker because I would just encourage
Speaker 1: you to go back to June one and listen to
Speaker 1: h John Muir Cowen sound Outdoor Enthusiast because we covered
Speaker 1: it in depth there. But uh, Murr moved to California
Speaker 1: in eight sixty eight, about four years after Yosemite was
Speaker 1: a state park. He loved it and immediately began lobbying
Speaker 1: Congress to make it a national park, which it did,
Speaker 1: but it didn't include a lot of what is now
Speaker 1: Yosemite National Park, including the Mariposa Grove in Yosemite Valley
Speaker 1: was still the state park, and he very famously went
Speaker 1: on a little buddy buddy camping trip with Teddy Roosevelt
Speaker 1: where Roosevelt was able to ditch his his uh entourage,
Speaker 1: and just the two of them camped in the woods
Speaker 1: for a weekend. And they came out and Roosevelt was like,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure what happened in there, you guys, but
Speaker 1: this guy works some magic on me. Alistair Crowley showed
Speaker 1: up exactly and Uh, we're gonna make it a national park.
Speaker 1: And so it was. I remember in the John Eure
Speaker 1: episode you kind of debunking that he managed to give
Speaker 1: the slip to his secret service agents. Is that there
Speaker 1: was something about it. There was something in there. I
Speaker 1: don't remember. We'll have to go back and listen. So
Speaker 1: either way, he came out of the woods. That's the
Speaker 1: curse of episodes, that's right. Uh, And he came out
Speaker 1: and was basically national park in national monument. Crazy from
Speaker 1: that point on. Yeah, he um had I think by
Speaker 1: the time his presidency was over, he had designated, uh,
Speaker 1: this is eighteen I saw seventeen different National monuments alone, um,
Speaker 1: which makes him second. Actually the most national what what
Speaker 1: they call it the National Park Service called a national
Speaker 1: monument and national park. Any of those things are called units.
Speaker 1: So the most unit designating president of all time is Clinton.
Speaker 1: He did nineteen and then Carter's third after um Teddy
Speaker 1: Roosevelt with fift I knew I was going to get
Speaker 1: to nineteen. It depends on the definition of what designate is.
Speaker 1: I wanted twenty. I was one short that guy. That
Speaker 1: guy all right. Uh So, now Yosemite is a full
Speaker 1: national park. By nineteen sixteen, there were fourteen national parks.
Speaker 1: Uh in the low twenties for national monuments, and they
Speaker 1: were being managed. It was still kind of loosey goosey.
Speaker 1: There was the US four Service. There were soldiers, including
Speaker 1: interestingly Buffalo soldiers another great episode. Yeah, man, this thing
Speaker 1: peppered with them. It's really kind of all over um.
Speaker 1: And then civilian appointees, like you know, people would get
Speaker 1: jobs and get appointments to to kind of work and
Speaker 1: manage national parks. Yeah. So in nineteen sixteen, Congress was like,
Speaker 1: we gotta we gotta clean this up a little bit.
Speaker 1: Who who among us is going to come up? With
Speaker 1: a term of art like dispersed camping. Nobody in charge
Speaker 1: of it right now. We need a bureaucratic service that's
Speaker 1: going to come up with that in the future. And
Speaker 1: they passed and Woodrow Wilson signed into law the Organic
Speaker 1: Act of nineteen sixteen, which basically said, Hey, we've got
Speaker 1: a lot of great stuff that we're starting to preserve,
Speaker 1: and we need to make sure that there's an agency
Speaker 1: task with preserving it for future generations, and we're going
Speaker 1: to call that the National Park Service. And with that
Speaker 1: the MPs was born. Yes, he said, who among you
Speaker 1: knows what all shades of green looked like together? And
Speaker 1: they showed him and he went, He's like, I guess
Speaker 1: go with it. Visible. No one else is going to
Speaker 1: paint their car that color, so we did as well
Speaker 1: use it. Right. So should we talk a little bit
Speaker 1: about the Grand Canyon? Yeah? Why not? Have you ever been? Yes?
Speaker 1: The Grand Canyon is amazing, especially the North Rim. It's
Speaker 1: incredibly beautiful, although I haven't been in the canyon. And
Speaker 1: by the way, Chuck, we also did the Mystery of
Speaker 1: the Grand Canyon newly Wides too. Oh yeah, I think
Speaker 1: at the time I probably mentioned that I hiked halfway down,
Speaker 1: but did not have like camping or or rafting reservations
Speaker 1: or anything, so we didn't go all the way down.
Speaker 1: There's a nice place about halfway down we can just
Speaker 1: kind of hang out and then the hike back out
Speaker 1: up is really tough, by the way, It's not for
Speaker 1: the faint of heart. I was younger and fitter back then,
Speaker 1: and I was fine. Um. And I also worked a
Speaker 1: TV commercial one time where they put probably forty motor
Speaker 1: homes on the rim and the Grand Canyon for us
Speaker 1: to stay in, which was really interesting. How close to
Speaker 1: the room I mean we were fifty ft away. I
Speaker 1: mean it was you know, you go out to go
Speaker 1: to the bathroom in the middle of the night if
Speaker 1: that's your jam, and people that way. It was a
Speaker 1: Michael Bay job that he got whatever he wanted. Uh,
Speaker 1: we couldn't waste time fearing people from the closest hotel,
Speaker 1: which was not close. So those that you may not
Speaker 1: have known it at the time, but those RVs parked
Speaker 1: along the room of the Grand Canyon was actually Michael
Speaker 1: Bay's secret homage to Ralph Henry Cameron, the terrible senator
Speaker 1: and possibly worst American ever to live. Who didn't involve
Speaker 1: murdering anybody. I can't tell any Michael Bays stories because
Speaker 1: I just don't want to do that in this public
Speaker 1: of a form, but I will say this, uh p
Speaker 1: A's had six people to a motor home. Michael Bay
Speaker 1: himself had three motor homes all connected. They were all
Speaker 1: in a little triangle, and those speculation about what each
Speaker 1: was for. And uh I'll just tell you later what
Speaker 1: we came up with. Okay, I can't wait, all right,
Speaker 1: but you mentioned sort of one of the villains in
Speaker 1: this great story, uh Ralph Henry Cameron, who was and
Speaker 1: a senator in Arizona, and he owned a lot of
Speaker 1: land that including parts of the of the Grand Canyon
Speaker 1: and parts of the Bright Angel Trail, which is the
Speaker 1: trail that goes down and he was making a lot
Speaker 1: of money and stood to make a lot more, and
Speaker 1: he was like, you can't, you can't do this. I'm
Speaker 1: charging people a buck apiece to go down that trail,
Speaker 1: which is about sixteen seventy five and today's dollars. And
Speaker 1: I've built a little that that kind of halfway point
Speaker 1: I was talking about. He built a little oasis there.
Speaker 1: He did have hotels near the rim of the canyon,
Speaker 1: and they said, I'm sorry, but you this is ours now.
Speaker 1: I guess it was an imminent domain play, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: and they said it belongs to us, right, and by
Speaker 1: we mean the American people. Yeah, you know there's a distinction.
Speaker 1: It's not like it's not like, um, this is my
Speaker 1: personal canyon I'm going to be charging the tolls here now. Yeah,
Speaker 1: exactly right. So, um, Cameron was totally defiant. He was.
Speaker 1: And it's not like he was just like some two bit,
Speaker 1: you know, toll operator charging a buck to everybody trying
Speaker 1: to get down in the canyon. He had hotels, I
Speaker 1: think he said. He was also involved in mining like
Speaker 1: he was doing. He was exploiting this as as much
Speaker 1: as he could, and he continued to do it even
Speaker 1: after Congress said no, this is now a national park.
Speaker 1: He said, you know, nuts to your national park. And
Speaker 1: the Supreme Court said, yeah, that's a national park. Now
Speaker 1: you need to stop all this operation. He said nuts
Speaker 1: to the Supreme Court. And then finally, um, the l A.
Speaker 1: Times took an interest in him right before the election,
Speaker 1: his his re election bid for the Senate, and um,
Speaker 1: they they, I guess, released a series of like ten
Speaker 1: articles that were really unflattering but apparently all true. They
Speaker 1: just did some serious investigating. And this guy was like
Speaker 1: he was um as. He was a kickback guy. He'd
Speaker 1: be like, hey, I'm a senator, give me some money
Speaker 1: and I'll get you whatever you want, you know, Like
Speaker 1: that was the kind of representative he was. And so
Speaker 1: they outed him, and the good people of Arizona rose
Speaker 1: to the occasion and voted him out of office. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he was doing I mean, he was spreading rumors, he
Speaker 1: was telling lies. He had a family member appointed as
Speaker 1: the post office director for I guess whatever. The post
Speaker 1: office is out there, and they were intercepting mail and
Speaker 1: opening mail, and it was they had to do things
Speaker 1: like encoded and in secret, like in the area just
Speaker 1: to get their messages through. Not not a good dude.
Speaker 1: And like you said, it came back to buy them
Speaker 1: and he he lost. So that's why history probably doesn't
Speaker 1: remember him so much. Pay democracy, that's right. So after
Speaker 1: he lost and after he went away, the Grand Canyon
Speaker 1: was an unfettered national park from that point on, that's right,
Speaker 1: full of tourists, tour buses. Yeah, and that park, also, Chuck,
Speaker 1: is bigger than the state of Rhode Island. Poor Rhode Island.
Speaker 1: Why does it always get thrown in there? Well, it's
Speaker 1: a tiny state. It's a good reference point, it is,
Speaker 1: and it's not. I mean, when you stand at the
Speaker 1: rim of the Grand Canyon, it looks like you could
Speaker 1: fit a few Rhode Islands in that sliver. But it's
Speaker 1: it's pretty amazing, it's genuine. Only one of the most
Speaker 1: like like literally breath taking things you'll ever see is
Speaker 1: when you first sort of walk out there and lay
Speaker 1: your eyes on it. Like you can hear about it,
Speaker 1: see pictures of it, you can see drone footage of it,
Speaker 1: but until you're standing there, it's truly just breath taking
Speaker 1: an inspiring and in that sense, Chuck, it's a um.
Speaker 1: It's a really good example of what what meets the
Speaker 1: criteria for a national park because one of the things
Speaker 1: the National Park Service started doing when it was created
Speaker 1: was identifying, you know, what makes the national park national park.
Speaker 1: Everybody wants, you know, some little beautiful slice of their
Speaker 1: their neighborhood or their area like turned into a national park.
Speaker 1: Like it's preserved from that point on. It's amazing and
Speaker 1: beautiful when that happens. But that doesn't mean that it
Speaker 1: really kind of is a true national park. And one
Speaker 1: of the things that they've said, like this would make
Speaker 1: an area national park would be something that is so
Speaker 1: unique and so significant there may not be anything like
Speaker 1: it in the world. Whether it has to do with grandeur,
Speaker 1: scope size, um. I know that there's there's some kinds
Speaker 1: of national parks that are set aside because they're like
Speaker 1: the only place that a kind of fossil can be discovered.
Speaker 1: There's something called the agate Um Fossil Beds and National Park,
Speaker 1: I think in Nebraska, and there are these two mounds
Speaker 1: that for some reason just escape glacial erosion, and so
Speaker 1: they're just like perfect undisturbed timeline of evolution on that
Speaker 1: corner of Earth. You just can't find that anywhere else
Speaker 1: on the planet. And so they're like this, this clearly
Speaker 1: qualifies as a national park. Yeah, and that's you know,
Speaker 1: it's good to point out. I know, you found that
Speaker 1: cool stuff on geo diversity, which is uh, it basically
Speaker 1: means landforms and landscapes of an area. And you know,
Speaker 1: if you go to Arches National Park or Devil's Tower
Speaker 1: National Monument like or like you were talking about, the
Speaker 1: fossil beds monument in Nebraska or cave systems, things like that.
Speaker 1: This is what geo diversity is. And it's a little
Speaker 1: less sexy as far as protection goes UM, because it's
Speaker 1: not a cute little animal, uh. And sometimes it's not
Speaker 1: as dramatic like as arches. You know, sometimes like it
Speaker 1: is like a fossil bed, which may not be the
Speaker 1: most amazing thing to look at, but like, protecting these
Speaker 1: sites are super super important to UM not only just
Speaker 1: preserve it, but to learn from it because you know,
Speaker 1: once that's gone, it's gone. Yeah. And one of the
Speaker 1: things UM I ran across this really cool UM quote
Speaker 1: from nineteen seventeen MPs worker said that um geology is
Speaker 1: the anatomy of scenery. I think it's a really amazing
Speaker 1: way to put it. And what they're basically saying is
Speaker 1: it's like like it needs to be protected as much,
Speaker 1: if not more, UM as biodiversity does within these parks
Speaker 1: from human activity, from exploitation, but also from like climate
Speaker 1: change and other processes that we're gonna see here like
Speaker 1: becoming more and more of a challenge for national parks.
Speaker 1: But there's like us, the scenery alone in a National
Speaker 1: park is worth preserving because there's things like like if
Speaker 1: you go to see Old Faithful, Chuck, and I've seen
Speaker 1: Old Faithful, like we have something to talk about. There's
Speaker 1: a shared experience even though we might have gone fifty
Speaker 1: years apart. We could probably based on your eight um,
Speaker 1: but like that's a huge thing. Not everything has that,
Speaker 1: or like they inspire awe, Like when's the last time
Speaker 1: you were you were moved to awe, like around Atlanta,
Speaker 1: like you weren't. It just doesn't happen like these There
Speaker 1: are unique landscapes, um. And the reason that they are
Speaker 1: unique is because of the geology and so geo diversity,
Speaker 1: like biodiversity needs to be protected as well as a
Speaker 1: concept that makes sense. Yeah, and you know protection means
Speaker 1: sometimes you'll go to a national park years later where
Speaker 1: you're like, oh, yeah, I used to be able to
Speaker 1: go closer to this thing and I can't do that anymore. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, you think about someone like oh, I want
Speaker 1: to carve my tree in this or carve my name
Speaker 1: in this. You're on this rock, and you you don't
Speaker 1: think about like I've never done stuff like that, but
Speaker 1: people do that stuff. You don't think about tens of
Speaker 1: thousands or millions of people doing that over the years,
Speaker 1: and so like they've had to kind of, uh figuratively
Speaker 1: rope off a lot of this stuff as these arches
Speaker 1: become more fragile and things like that. So your access
Speaker 1: is going to be a little more limited than it
Speaker 1: once was. But it's all in the name of protection.
Speaker 1: It's good stuff. So the westwards stuff like Yosemites, El
Speaker 1: Capitan in the Yosemite Valley and then amazing Waterfall which apparently,
Speaker 1: according to Backpacker magazine, you can see what are called
Speaker 1: moon bows from the waterfall miss at Yosemite. Did you
Speaker 1: know that. I've never seen one. I mean, I've spent
Speaker 1: a lot of time there. It sounds amazing, it sounds
Speaker 1: super cool. It's a it's a rainbow that you see
Speaker 1: at night under a moon. Yeah, I can't imagine what
Speaker 1: that is. Like you probably a full moon, right I would.
Speaker 1: I would think so at the very least to be
Speaker 1: you know, even better in a full moon. But like, again,
Speaker 1: you're not going to see a moonbo around Atlanta or
Speaker 1: around Houston or Cleveland. Like, the reason that these parks
Speaker 1: exist and the reason that they deserve protection is because
Speaker 1: they are unique and they do things to us that
Speaker 1: we haven't yet figured out how to put our finger on.
Speaker 1: We just know that they move us somehow. And um,
Speaker 1: I read a quote chuck from activist and writer named
Speaker 1: Terry Tempest Williams, and I think it puts it really well.
Speaker 1: She said that national parks are breathing spaces in a
Speaker 1: society increasingly holding its breath. I love that, chuck. You're
Speaker 1: also not going to see a river on fire from it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you're not going to see a Sicilian man dressed as
Speaker 1: a Native American turning and crying toward a camera in
Speaker 1: a national park to Cleveland for that first thing. Right, alright,
Speaker 1: so thing, well, maybe we should take a break. Should
Speaker 1: we take a break? Yeah? It sounds like a good
Speaker 1: point to stop. All right, we'll talk about what's going
Speaker 1: on out west and uh, the very little going on
Speaker 1: here in the east when we get back. All right,
Speaker 1: So things are really cruising up through the nineteen twenties
Speaker 1: out west Zion and Bryce Canyon. You've got Glacier, you've
Speaker 1: got Yellowstone, you got Yosemite. Like they're just they're going
Speaker 1: hog wild on national park land and back east. At
Speaker 1: that point, the only national park was Acadia National Park
Speaker 1: in Maine, and so Congress in the mid nineteen twenties says,
Speaker 1: you know what, we should probably get rolling here in
Speaker 1: the Midwest and on the East coast and designate some
Speaker 1: of this land too, because it may not be quite
Speaker 1: as grand, but it's a pretty great uh. And national
Speaker 1: parks like in the Appalachian region, Shenandoah, Great Smokey Mountains, uh,
Speaker 1: Mammoth Caves, things like that were designated. But they're like,
Speaker 1: but listen, we spend a lot of money out west,
Speaker 1: and we're not going to pony up to pay for
Speaker 1: all this land. So another gentleman steps forward at this point,
Speaker 1: John D. Rockefeller Jr. And said, Hey, I've got a
Speaker 1: ton of oil money for my dad, and what better
Speaker 1: way to spend that, uh those ill gotten gains than
Speaker 1: to help buy back a lot of this land. So
Speaker 1: he donated a ton. He donated five million bucks um
Speaker 1: to buy land for the Great Smoky Mountains. He got
Speaker 1: his charitable foundations involved to help raise more money for
Speaker 1: Grand Teton National Parks in Shenandoah, and uh, pretty soon
Speaker 1: he had covered like a lot of this new land,
Speaker 1: like the financing behind it. Yeah, from in today's dollars
Speaker 1: just for a stand of sugar pines outside of Yosemite
Speaker 1: and the land for the Smokey Mountains National Park. He
Speaker 1: ponied up almost a hundred million dollars of his own money.
Speaker 1: It's amazing, Yeah, it really is. So. I mean, hats
Speaker 1: off to to John D. Rockefeller, and also hats off Junior,
Speaker 1: thank you, um, and hats off to F. D. R. Too,
Speaker 1: who around this time became president and he saw in
Speaker 1: the in the New Deal, um, the Depression earra New Deal,
Speaker 1: where uh, part of the purpose of which was to
Speaker 1: to help alleviate the worst effects of the Depression on
Speaker 1: Americans was um to put people to work using federal funds.
Speaker 1: But to me, it's just one of the best things
Speaker 1: you could possibly spend federal funds on is to help
Speaker 1: out of work Americans during particularly hard times. That's what
Speaker 1: the cons the Civilian Conservation Corps was about. Like they
Speaker 1: would hire out of work men in particular age eighteen
Speaker 1: to twenty five and put them to work. And one
Speaker 1: of the ways that they were put to work, one
Speaker 1: of the big ways they were put to work was um,
Speaker 1: basically establishing new national parks. Yeah, hundreds of thousands of
Speaker 1: these people were employed. Uh, and I think from nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty three to nineteen forty two about two million and
Speaker 1: rollies worked at close to two hundred of these camps.
Speaker 1: In ninety four National Parks and Monuments and uh, there's
Speaker 1: a couple of them. Great Smokey Mountains National Park in
Speaker 1: uh North Carolina and Tennessee and Big Bend in Texas
Speaker 1: were basically entirely created from work by C C C Labor. Yes,
Speaker 1: And one of the things that that they were also
Speaker 1: tasked with was creating visitors centers um as part of
Speaker 1: like the Smokey Mountains Park um. And I guess Shenandoah too,
Speaker 1: or Big Band, I should say, but that that there
Speaker 1: weren't nearly enough visitors centers when the post war boom
Speaker 1: hit after World War Two, and there were a bunch
Speaker 1: of Americans who suddenly were flushed with a lot more money,
Speaker 1: who spent it on cars and started hitting the road
Speaker 1: and saying like, let's see these National parks for ourselves. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And of course that put a stress on the parks.
Speaker 1: So they launched Mission sixty six, which was basically by
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty six, which is the fiftieth anniversary the NPS,
Speaker 1: we want to have a lot more of this under
Speaker 1: control because of the influx people now who can afford
Speaker 1: to buy cars and are coming in. And one of
Speaker 1: those big things was visitor centers public services, and uh,
Speaker 1: you know they still you know, when you go to
Speaker 1: these visitors centers, they have these great interactive exhibits and
Speaker 1: audio visual programming and stuff like that. I mean, a's
Speaker 1: as far as a lot of people go. They kind
Speaker 1: of drive around and they'll go to these visitor centers
Speaker 1: and they'll leave. I again, I recommend you sort of
Speaker 1: get a little more adventurous if you're able to and
Speaker 1: uh kind of peel off from the pack. But that's
Speaker 1: just the way I like to do things. Uh not,
Speaker 1: you can anyone's yum. But um. By nineteen sixty there
Speaker 1: was a you know, a pretty big concern about at
Speaker 1: least from conservationists, about the fact that hey, the wolves
Speaker 1: of disappe heard, Um, some of this land is is
Speaker 1: too busy right now. Um. And so they in nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty three, they got a committee together chaired by exactly
Speaker 1: the right person if you're a friend of the environment
Speaker 1: and environmental scientists named a Starker Leopold, who drew up
Speaker 1: a report called Wildlife Problems in National Parks forever to
Speaker 1: be known as the Leopold Report. Noticed there's no colon
Speaker 1: in that title too, this is the pre colon era.
Speaker 1: He had no use for that. He was too busy
Speaker 1: trying to save the planet. Yes, So this Leopold Report
Speaker 1: basically said, hey, everybody, um, we are losing biodiversity. And
Speaker 1: everybody said, what's that? And they said, just give it
Speaker 1: a few years and everybody, you'll know what that means.
Speaker 1: But like, our parks are in big trouble. We're losing
Speaker 1: a lot of animals. A lot of it we're doing ourselves.
Speaker 1: A lot of is from human activity and encroachment, and
Speaker 1: we need to start protecting the animals in the park.
Speaker 1: And so that became kind of like a guiding principle
Speaker 1: of the National Park Service, so much so that they
Speaker 1: formed the Biological Resources Division, which is in charge of
Speaker 1: wildlife management and all of the parks, which is really
Speaker 1: something because I don't think we've said yet, but the
Speaker 1: national parks in America comprised something like eighty four million acres.
Speaker 1: So the Biological Resources Division is in charge of eighty
Speaker 1: four million acres of wildlife to make sure that everybody's
Speaker 1: okay in that from Yogi Bear to the dancing bear
Speaker 1: at the visitor center and yellow Stone. That's right. And
Speaker 1: you mentioned the Olympic marmot. That is one of two
Speaker 1: animals that lives exclusively inside the bounds of a national park,
Speaker 1: the Olympic Marmot an Olympic National Park in the Shenandoah salamander.
Speaker 1: You can guess where that one is. But um, it's
Speaker 1: an interesting you know, the Leopold Report, it was a
Speaker 1: pretty bold statement to basically say that I think the
Speaker 1: quota is a national park should represent a vignetta primitive America.
Speaker 1: So Leopold's idea is like this needs to be like
Speaker 1: we found it, uh, and you need to preserve it
Speaker 1: and or maybe even return it to that state where
Speaker 1: we have so far screwed up. Obviously, just with people visiting,
Speaker 1: you're never going to get to that point. But it's
Speaker 1: a good lofty goal, I think it is. And again,
Speaker 1: one of the things that they found out over the
Speaker 1: years is like, you know, there's this idea that Native
Speaker 1: Americans were just living on this untouched pristine land and
Speaker 1: all you have to do is remove the Native Americans
Speaker 1: and it would remain that way, and they found out that,
Speaker 1: oh no, actually the Native Americans were actively managing these
Speaker 1: landscapes and we have to go figure out how to
Speaker 1: how to do that from them. Um. So there was
Speaker 1: that that really set everybody back. But that's become part
Speaker 1: of like the National Park Service mission as well. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I think you can look no further than the
Speaker 1: reintroduction of the wolf, uh to Yellowstone gray wolves. They
Speaker 1: were hunted to extinction in the thirties and you're like, oh,
Speaker 1: why do you need wolves, Like, aren't they just gonna
Speaker 1: threaten people? Um, we talked about bio diversity before. It's
Speaker 1: really important to trickle down imp act. It's called the
Speaker 1: trophic cascade. And all of a sudden wolves are back.
Speaker 1: So the elk are like, oh, we can't just stay
Speaker 1: in one place and over graze. We gotta get on
Speaker 1: the move. And now they're not over grazing, so there's
Speaker 1: less erosion on the river banks. They are healthier grasslands,
Speaker 1: they're not overgrazing willow trees. So the beavers are like, hey,
Speaker 1: I can come back because I love those willow trees.
Speaker 1: I love to build dams. If you listen to our
Speaker 1: episode on beavers, you know that they're uh keystone species.
Speaker 1: So when the beavers are back, that means fish are back,
Speaker 1: and mammals are back and birds are back. And this
Speaker 1: is all because they reintroduce the gray wolf. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: just pretty neat stuff like that. He said. I always
Speaker 1: feel bad for the prey animals that are like they
Speaker 1: go from being like easy going to scare it all
Speaker 1: the time, you know, but it helps everything else. But
Speaker 1: there it's tough. Nature's it's tough. Yeah. So that Leopold
Speaker 1: report came out in sixty three, and um, unfortunately it
Speaker 1: didn't solve all of the problems permanently. I don't know
Speaker 1: that saw of any problems, but it basically said, here's
Speaker 1: a bunch of problems and we need to to wrap
Speaker 1: our heads around them and get them solved, mainly figuring
Speaker 1: out how to protect the bio diversity and later on
Speaker 1: the geo diversity in these national parks. Um, and and
Speaker 1: what the stuff that it tasked the National Park Service
Speaker 1: with with taking on has like just gotten increasingly more difficult.
Speaker 1: More people visit the parks, and whenever there's more humans,
Speaker 1: there's more trash, there's more wildlife encounters, there's more cars,
Speaker 1: causing traffic jams. There's more need for reservations, and there's
Speaker 1: just much more problems and more visitors you have. It's like, uh,
Speaker 1: the national parks can be a victim of their own
Speaker 1: success sometimes. Um. And then there's also other like challenges
Speaker 1: to that have nothing to do with the amount of
Speaker 1: people coming. Like again, climate change is starting to pose
Speaker 1: a real problem. Um. I saw somewhere that Glacier National
Speaker 1: Park may just be a name in thirty years that
Speaker 1: there's not going to be any glaciers left. Um. And
Speaker 1: so one of the one of the things that National
Speaker 1: Park Service, one of the services that provides, is like
Speaker 1: being able to study these generally like pristine preserved landscapes
Speaker 1: and see what's happening in the rest of the world
Speaker 1: in nature. Uh, in our own backyard in America, you know, yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 1: And it's you know, they struggle because of underfunding and understaffing.
Speaker 1: And you know, next time you hear someone in your
Speaker 1: family say, like, what a waste of money to throw
Speaker 1: this money towards uh, toward national parks, Like just let
Speaker 1: them be, Um, go over there and and tap him
Speaker 1: on the shoulder and say it's a great investment. Actually
Speaker 1: sir or ma'am. Uh, here's a little stat for you.
Speaker 1: In um, there were two hundred seventy three million visitors
Speaker 1: to National Park Service areas, and they spent about fourteen
Speaker 1: point six billion dollars in the communities near these places, uh,
Speaker 1: to the tune of about two hundred thousand local jobs
Speaker 1: and a total of twenty six point five billion dollars
Speaker 1: back to the economy of the United States. If you
Speaker 1: do the math. Uh, the federal budget for the NPS
Speaker 1: is about two point seven billions, So every dollar that
Speaker 1: has invested comes back tenfold in economic activity, and that,
Speaker 1: to my friend, is a great return. Yeah. It definitely
Speaker 1: supports the idea of preserving land out away from like logging, mining,
Speaker 1: hunting interests. Um. It's like it's it's irrefutable right there.
Speaker 1: I love it. I love it too, so UM. What
Speaker 1: we were talking about challenges though, before that that wonderful
Speaker 1: little economic stat though, um, And one of the one
Speaker 1: of the challenges, uh, that that the parks are facing
Speaker 1: is this like a growing perception that doesn't seem to
Speaker 1: be rooted in reality statistically speaking, at least, that national
Speaker 1: parks are actually like really dangerous places to be and
Speaker 1: that there seemed to be like they seem to be
Speaker 1: a place where, like you're you're likelier to die than
Speaker 1: say elsewhere in in you know, America, which I don't
Speaker 1: think is true. Right. Yeah, there's a great article called
Speaker 1: National Park Murders colon hundreds killed missing, No one is
Speaker 1: talking from Emily canton Er uh, and it's I mean,
Speaker 1: this story kind of came about after the Gabby Potito story.
Speaker 1: Of course, her body sadly was discovered in Grand Teton
Speaker 1: National Park. UM in twenty nineteen, the NPS chief said
Speaker 1: that there's basically um three hundred and twelve deaths per
Speaker 1: year in national parks, one for every one million visitors.
Speaker 1: So that's a pretty low number. Uh. Drowning is a
Speaker 1: leading cause of death. Then there's you know, vehicle accidents, falls, poisonings,
Speaker 1: wildlife encounters, natural causes suicide. Uh. And then you know
Speaker 1: there are are murders in sexual assaults in national park.
Speaker 1: They're pretty rare, but anytime someone gets murdered in a
Speaker 1: national park it makes the news. And so it's sort
Speaker 1: of a pretty big story. Should not make you, uh
Speaker 1: not want to visit them, but you know, it's their
Speaker 1: big open areas and uh, you can. You can trust
Speaker 1: almost everyone when you go there. But anytime someone gets murdered,
Speaker 1: someone says, it's a perfect place to do that around
Speaker 1: the middle of nowhere. You can get rid of a
Speaker 1: body so easily out there, right, I think also because
Speaker 1: it's so rare, that's why it makes the news, and
Speaker 1: weirdly it seems to amplify it because I was looking
Speaker 1: up the statum, like, is one death for per million?
Speaker 1: Is that is that low? And it's super low. I
Speaker 1: was looking at Atlanta's murder statistics, So that's one death
Speaker 1: you just said, also drownings, poisonings, animal and co owners.
Speaker 1: In Atlanta murders alone, there's sixty per million murders in
Speaker 1: a year. This is one death per million um in
Speaker 1: a year in the national park entire national park system.
Speaker 1: So yes, it is very lopsided and unfair to say
Speaker 1: the national parks are a dangerous place and that there's
Speaker 1: actually like a disproportionately high number of deaths and high
Speaker 1: sides there is just patently untrue. Right, But you should
Speaker 1: be careful any time you're You should camp with a
Speaker 1: buddy if you can, and um, you know, just be
Speaker 1: careful anytime you're camping even is not in the national
Speaker 1: park if you're looking at the it's It is interesting
Speaker 1: because there's one stat that North Cascades in National Park
Speaker 1: in Washington, UM has sixty five times higher death rate
Speaker 1: than any of the other parks, which is but they
Speaker 1: don't know why. I've kind of tried to find out
Speaker 1: and it seems like no one can really tell. It's
Speaker 1: the Atlanta of the national park system. I guess sixty
Speaker 1: five point two deaths for every million people that now,
Speaker 1: that is definitely high and odd. So yeah, I guess
Speaker 1: just steer clear that one. No, no, no, no no.
Speaker 1: But this was such a good idea, and I think
Speaker 1: we should close on the fact that the world followed
Speaker 1: our lead, right Yeah, So I think we're saying that
Speaker 1: early on, um, like the Yellowstone was the first in
Speaker 1: the world, but in very short order the All Australian said, hey,
Speaker 1: we're working on the same kind of thing too, and
Speaker 1: they established one called the Royal National Park all the
Speaker 1: way back in uh eighteen seventy nine, I think, yeah,
Speaker 1: not bad. Canada came along run after that. I think
Speaker 1: New Zealand followed suit after that. Then Europe got on board,
Speaker 1: and then Africa got on board, and now there are
Speaker 1: more than four thousand national parks all over the world. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was just a good idea. And um, I I'd
Speaker 1: actually like to close with this, chuck, because um they're
Speaker 1: one of the huge challenges that are facing national parks
Speaker 1: is that the most popular national parks are super popular.
Speaker 1: I think like the twenty twenty or maybe five or
Speaker 1: four some crazy low number of national parks made up
Speaker 1: like fifty percent of visitor rates in like, it's really lopsided.
Speaker 1: So the national parks and just trying to be like, hey,
Speaker 1: don't forget this national park, and here's another one over
Speaker 1: here you should check out. And I was reading about that,
Speaker 1: and the Sierra Club has a proposal. It's make more
Speaker 1: national parks. You make a new national park and you
Speaker 1: advertise that there's a new national park. It's going to
Speaker 1: take away some of those people who would have otherwise
Speaker 1: gone to yellow Stone And so more national parks is
Speaker 1: just a good idea all across the board. But it
Speaker 1: will also alleviate one of the big pressing problems, which
Speaker 1: is over attendance at certain parks. I love it more
Speaker 1: national parks, everybody, Okay, that's what I say. Well, since
Speaker 1: Chuck said, that's what I say. Of course, that means
Speaker 1: it's time for listener mail. I'm gonna call this a
Speaker 1: repeated tangent. It happens every now and then. Hey, guys,
Speaker 1: listen to the episode on the child Chill a bus
Speaker 1: kidnapping and Chuck till or Josh tells Chuck a story
Speaker 1: and a tangent about seeing Robert Golay on TV. I
Speaker 1: would make Elvis so Maddie shoot appliances. Immediately remembered an
Speaker 1: older stuff you should know, computer addiction. Josh told Chuck
Speaker 1: the same tangent about seeing Robert Galley on TV. And
Speaker 1: I was listening to that episode when I'm move my
Speaker 1: life from a small town in Arkansas to Louisiana, and
Speaker 1: that tangent and Chuck doing an Elvis impression made me
Speaker 1: laugh so hard that I literally had soda coming out
Speaker 1: of my nose. Ouch. I feel bad that I didn't
Speaker 1: do the Elvis impression this time too before. Of course
Speaker 1: I have man uh. Thinking about this repeated tangent put
Speaker 1: into perspective that I've been a listener since I was
Speaker 1: in college seven years ago, through three job changes, six moves.
Speaker 1: Thank you for all the good times and all the
Speaker 1: good information. But my girlfriend and everyone else I shared
Speaker 1: tidbits with probably wouldn't call it good information bo to them.
Speaker 1: So Connor see in Chicago, Uh, you might want to
Speaker 1: rethink your the people you're hanging out with. You almost said,
Speaker 1: Chuck went right up to the edge. Connor, right up
Speaker 1: to the canyon. Rim you take it from there. I did. Well.
Speaker 1: If you want to be like Connor and get us
Speaker 1: to tell you to rethink your life, you should email us.
Speaker 1: Like Connor, you can wrap it up send it in
Speaker 1: an email to stuff podcast at iHeart radio dot com.
Speaker 1: M Stuff you Should Know is a production of I
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Speaker 1: to your favorite shows. H