WEBVTT - Ep. 22: New West, Modern West, Public Lands West 0:00:01.320 --> 0:00:04.600 While it's historical story is what creates the West and 0:00:04.640 --> 0:00:08.719 the eyes of the world, for residents and most visitors today, 0:00:09.000 --> 0:00:13.960 it's the public lands that now define Western life. I'm 0:00:14.040 --> 0:00:18.599 Dan Flores and this is the American West, brought to 0:00:18.640 --> 0:00:22.240 you by Velvet Buck Wine, where the hunt meets the harvest. 0:00:22.760 --> 0:00:26.279 A portion of each bottle goes to support backcountry hunters 0:00:26.280 --> 0:00:32.000 and anglers. Limited supply available at Velvetbuck Vineyards dot com. 0:00:32.120 --> 0:00:56.440 Enjoy responsible New West's Modern West public Lands West. For 0:00:56.560 --> 0:00:59.160 eighteen years of my life, I live full time in 0:00:59.160 --> 0:01:02.520 the state of Texas. I'm not a Texan by birth, 0:01:02.800 --> 0:01:06.840 but rather from old Louisiana families, and living in Texas 0:01:06.880 --> 0:01:09.840 made me understand that you very likely do need to 0:01:09.880 --> 0:01:13.000 be born and raised in that state to fully embrace 0:01:13.080 --> 0:01:17.640 lone Star life. Native born Texans accept at face value 0:01:17.640 --> 0:01:21.560 things about their history and modern existence there that don't 0:01:21.600 --> 0:01:25.959 necessarily resonate if you're from somewhere else. I spent the 0:01:26.000 --> 0:01:29.240 majority of my Texas years in West Texas, but not 0:01:29.480 --> 0:01:32.959 the Big Bend Country or the trans Pacos as it's known. 0:01:33.720 --> 0:01:36.760 I lived in the southern high Plains, most of those 0:01:36.840 --> 0:01:41.120 years in a canyon insized into the state Plain or 0:01:41.240 --> 0:01:45.640 Yano West Taccado, a giant plateau spreading from the Texas 0:01:45.680 --> 0:01:50.560 Panhandle across into eastern New Mexico. Was I living in 0:01:50.600 --> 0:01:54.559 the West in those years? Is Texas part of the West? 0:01:55.440 --> 0:02:00.400 Is West Texas part of the West. Historically Texas is 0:02:00.440 --> 0:02:04.880 as much deep South as West. It was Southerners who 0:02:05.000 --> 0:02:09.880 largely settled it, even West Texas, bringing their culture, religions, 0:02:09.919 --> 0:02:15.280 and a drawl geographically and ecologically. The High Plains certainly 0:02:15.320 --> 0:02:19.800 appear as Western, though, as the celebrated writer Joseph wood 0:02:19.919 --> 0:02:23.520 Krooch put it in his book The Desert Year, as 0:02:23.560 --> 0:02:28.520 he described driving the Texas Panhandle, the red eroded sandstone 0:02:28.840 --> 0:02:32.720 and the cactus declare that this is New Mexico, a 0:02:32.760 --> 0:02:36.520 good many miles before the map makers have recognized the fact. 0:02:37.760 --> 0:02:41.360 So in High Plains Texas there are canyons and cactus 0:02:41.960 --> 0:02:46.080 ranches and rodeos and index finger waves on the highway. 0:02:46.680 --> 0:02:50.480 But as this region the full on modern American West, 0:02:51.280 --> 0:02:54.880 it never seems so to me. And I'll tell you why. 0:02:55.800 --> 0:02:59.520 We all should admit that the West's modern story is 0:02:59.560 --> 0:03:03.160 as impart as it's passed. In terms of what it's 0:03:03.280 --> 0:03:07.080 like to visit are to live in such a celebrated region. 0:03:07.720 --> 0:03:10.520 But it's the West, merely a place with a frontier 0:03:10.720 --> 0:03:14.400 history and the enduring symbols of it. If the presence 0:03:14.440 --> 0:03:17.520 of cowboy hats and pickup trucks as a replacement for 0:03:17.600 --> 0:03:21.239 horses is enough to muster the West, then Texas is in, 0:03:21.680 --> 0:03:25.480 but so is Tennessee. If that's all you need, then 0:03:25.680 --> 0:03:31.280 Austin and Nashville are both Western cities. On the other hand, 0:03:31.440 --> 0:03:36.080 when today's historians identify what makes the West as a 0:03:36.160 --> 0:03:40.400 region different from the rest of America, they put up 0:03:40.440 --> 0:03:45.760 a ven diagram that includes a list like this number 0:03:45.800 --> 0:03:49.880 one with a few exceptions, Like the Pacific Coast. The 0:03:49.920 --> 0:03:55.520 West is defined by aridity, a dryness that exposes geology 0:03:55.840 --> 0:04:00.360 and opens up views to far distances, which it means 0:04:00.400 --> 0:04:03.320 that compared to the rest of America, the West is 0:04:03.480 --> 0:04:09.440 ecologically different or unique. Beyond the ninety eighth meridian of longitude, 0:04:09.560 --> 0:04:13.800 America is forested only on its high mountain ranges or 0:04:13.840 --> 0:04:21.320 in deep canyons. Otherwise, sparse moisture produces grassy prairies and plains, cactus, 0:04:21.480 --> 0:04:26.839 creosote and sagebrush deserts, scattered and dwarfed tree cover of 0:04:27.040 --> 0:04:32.920 pinion and limber pines and junipers. Aridity also produces dry, 0:04:33.120 --> 0:04:39.040 clear air, sparkling nights of polysh stars, and oceans of sunshine. 0:04:39.200 --> 0:04:43.720 Despite the cowboy hats, Nashville fades out rapidly as this 0:04:43.880 --> 0:04:48.640 kind of Western place. Number two. The West is often 0:04:48.680 --> 0:04:51.960 thought of as wide open spaces, but it has featured 0:04:52.080 --> 0:04:55.039 cities like the Great Rock buildings of the Chaco and 0:04:55.120 --> 0:05:00.359 civilization as far back as a thousand years ago. Unlike 0:05:00.480 --> 0:05:03.480 much of the rest of the country, the West cities 0:05:03.640 --> 0:05:08.279 tend to be widely scattered in what geographers call an 0:05:08.279 --> 0:05:14.440 oasis settlement pattern, with vast open lands between. That's still 0:05:14.480 --> 0:05:18.080 true along both sides of the Rockies and even along 0:05:18.200 --> 0:05:23.039 the densely populated Pacific Coast today. Number three. The most 0:05:23.080 --> 0:05:26.320 western of American places tend to be those that still 0:05:26.360 --> 0:05:32.480 retain the continent's original diagnostic wild animals and the ecologies 0:05:32.560 --> 0:05:37.400 they've long shaped with wolf and grizzly bear recovery. In particular, 0:05:37.880 --> 0:05:40.680 the West is the part of the country that retains 0:05:40.800 --> 0:05:43.720 more of its wild keynote species than the rest of 0:05:43.760 --> 0:05:48.159 the country. Number four. The West is still the home 0:05:48.320 --> 0:05:52.440 of most of America's Native people, whose presence is a 0:05:52.480 --> 0:05:57.320 notable feature of the region's cultural imprint and human diversity 0:05:58.200 --> 0:06:03.120 Number five and five. The West is the primary region 0:06:03.240 --> 0:06:08.320 of America's public lands. Whether there are national parks, monuments, 0:06:08.560 --> 0:06:13.480 wildlife refuges, national forests, or national grasslands are Bureau of 0:06:13.600 --> 0:06:18.279 Land Management holdings, The vast majority of the country's public lands, 0:06:18.640 --> 0:06:23.120 wilderness areas, and wild and scenic rivers are in the West. 0:06:23.800 --> 0:06:27.400 Most importantly of all, the presence of the West's public 0:06:27.480 --> 0:06:32.039 lands provides residents and visitors and ability to access the 0:06:32.200 --> 0:06:35.839 natural world to an extent that's rarely a feature of 0:06:35.960 --> 0:06:41.440 modern life in other American regions. So as for the 0:06:41.520 --> 0:06:45.159 high plains of West Texas, it is arid, and in 0:06:45.200 --> 0:06:48.200 the places where its nature is still intact, it is 0:06:48.320 --> 0:06:54.560 ecologically Western. It has cowboys and pickups and a frontier history, 0:06:55.279 --> 0:06:58.200 but it lacks the other three characteristics that make up 0:06:58.200 --> 0:07:02.720 today's American West. The wild bison and wolves and wild 0:07:02.760 --> 0:07:07.440 horses that made up its keystone animals are almost completely gone, 0:07:07.880 --> 0:07:13.280 as are its native peoples entirely long since banished to Oklahoma, 0:07:13.960 --> 0:07:17.840 and the vast percentage of its landscape is not publicly 0:07:17.920 --> 0:07:23.120 accessible but privately owned and often jealously decorated with those 0:07:23.160 --> 0:07:27.720 symbols of the not quite West, angry and belligerent no 0:07:27.840 --> 0:07:33.200 trespassing signs. Next door to Texas, However, in New Mexico, 0:07:33.680 --> 0:07:37.960 twenty one Native tribes live in the state. Mexican wolf 0:07:38.080 --> 0:07:42.240 numbers are at nearly three hundred animals and increasing yearly, 0:07:42.920 --> 0:07:46.960 and compared to Texas is one percent. In New Mexico, 0:07:47.320 --> 0:07:51.480 forty two percent of the state is federally managed. The 0:07:51.640 --> 0:07:55.520 vast bulk of that all but Indian reservations and military 0:07:55.560 --> 0:08:01.400 installations in public and accessible form manage lands in nearby 0:08:01.520 --> 0:08:05.680 Colorado make up thirty seven percent of that state, and 0:08:05.800 --> 0:08:09.720 Wyoming the figure is fifty two percent, and in Montana 0:08:09.880 --> 0:08:14.960 thirty three percent. Arizona's figure is seventy two percent, Utah's 0:08:15.160 --> 0:08:20.240 sixty four percent, and Nevada's eighty percent. Idaho's is at 0:08:20.280 --> 0:08:26.240 sixty two percent, California's forty five percent, Oregon's fifty four percent, 0:08:26.840 --> 0:08:31.720 Washington State's thirty five percent, and Alaska's public lands are 0:08:31.760 --> 0:08:36.440 at eighty nine percent. Texas's federal lands public are not, 0:08:36.840 --> 0:08:40.440 as a reminder, make up one percent of that state. 0:08:41.480 --> 0:08:44.880 The East and the Midwest, they're the percentage of accessible 0:08:44.960 --> 0:08:49.360 nature ranges from one percent to nine percent. The larger 0:08:49.440 --> 0:08:53.400 figure a result of later transplanting of the public lands 0:08:53.440 --> 0:08:57.600 idea from the West to destroyed cutover forest lands in 0:08:57.640 --> 0:09:02.800 the east. Texas has about as much publicly accessible landscape 0:09:03.120 --> 0:09:09.280 as Kansas, Iowa, Illinois, and Indiana, all at one percent 0:09:09.520 --> 0:09:14.360 or less. Recently, an editor of Outside magazine, long based 0:09:14.360 --> 0:09:17.600 in Santa Fe, left the magazine and moved to Austin, 0:09:17.920 --> 0:09:21.000 thinking he was going to a progressive urban part of 0:09:21.040 --> 0:09:23.880 the West in a state with almost no way to 0:09:23.960 --> 0:09:27.440 access the natural world. He didn't last six months before 0:09:27.480 --> 0:09:31.560 moving back to New Mexico. Even among the Great Plain states, 0:09:31.760 --> 0:09:36.360 which like West Texas, have Western aridity and frontier history 0:09:36.400 --> 0:09:40.840 going for them and often do retain native populations, only 0:09:40.880 --> 0:09:45.600 South Dakota, with eighteen percent of its lands federally managed, 0:09:45.640 --> 0:09:48.439 can claim to be fully a part of the modern 0:09:48.440 --> 0:09:53.800 American West. How did this happen with respect to the 0:09:53.880 --> 0:09:57.640 public lands, whose presence or absence plays such a role 0:09:58.000 --> 0:10:00.560 in how one gets to live in the world. It's 0:10:00.600 --> 0:10:05.319 time for me to tell you their creation story, from 0:10:05.400 --> 0:10:08.920 the time of the very first homestead acts designed by 0:10:09.000 --> 0:10:13.600 Thomas Jefferson in the seventeen eighties. The former Indian lands 0:10:13.640 --> 0:10:17.040 that made up the public domain the US was adding 0:10:17.080 --> 0:10:20.199 to the country in the nineteenth century all went into 0:10:20.240 --> 0:10:25.680 the coffers of the General Land Office or GOLO. The 0:10:25.840 --> 0:10:30.160 GOLO offered land for sale or later in history as 0:10:30.400 --> 0:10:36.080 free homesteads or grants to citizens non citizens, and to 0:10:36.400 --> 0:10:41.920 infrastructure building entities like railroads or canal builders. In the 0:10:42.000 --> 0:10:46.679 tradition of the Western European countries, General Land Office holding's 0:10:46.800 --> 0:10:55.079 intended destiny was to become private property through purchases Louisiana, Alaska, 0:10:55.240 --> 0:11:00.000 the Gadsden purchase, diplomatic agreements with Britain for the Northwest, 0:11:00.160 --> 0:11:03.760 for example, treaties for Indian lands, or for ending the 0:11:03.800 --> 0:11:08.840 Mexican War and incorporating the Southwest, and finally annexations like 0:11:08.920 --> 0:11:13.320 Texas and Hawaii. The US acquired an enormous amount of 0:11:13.400 --> 0:11:17.280 real estate between eighteen o three and eighteen ninety eight. 0:11:18.800 --> 0:11:22.960 As various federal expeditions explored those lands and reported on them, 0:11:23.360 --> 0:11:28.360 a prescient handful of Americans began to wonder about privatization 0:11:28.480 --> 0:11:32.480 as a blanket policy aimed so bluntly at such an 0:11:32.559 --> 0:11:37.200 ecologically diverse range of landscapes, even As they did so, 0:11:37.480 --> 0:11:41.920 evolving homestead laws continued to survey, partition and sell our 0:11:42.000 --> 0:11:47.160 grant lands to advancing settlement. Very frequently that settlement took 0:11:47.200 --> 0:11:50.560 place on lands the Indians, who had long owned the 0:11:50.600 --> 0:11:55.000 ground had barely left. During and after the Civil War, 0:11:55.480 --> 0:12:00.920 two influential Americans in particular worried about this privatezation tradition 0:12:01.360 --> 0:12:06.920 in widely read influential volumes. One of those volumes became 0:12:07.160 --> 0:12:12.079 a best seller, the other one a widely discussed congressional report. 0:12:12.800 --> 0:12:16.040 The author of the best seller was an American diplomat 0:12:16.200 --> 0:12:20.720 named George Perkins Marsh, a polymath New Englander who read 0:12:20.800 --> 0:12:25.240 twenty languages and as a result, received diplomatic appointments all 0:12:25.280 --> 0:12:29.240 over the globe. Marsh wrote a book in eighteen sixty 0:12:29.280 --> 0:12:34.760 four he called Man and Nature. In effect, this was 0:12:34.840 --> 0:12:39.880 the first modern history of the environment any writer had 0:12:39.920 --> 0:12:44.240 ever attempted. Although Marsh took on a huge range of 0:12:44.320 --> 0:12:49.079 topics relating to humanity's relationship with the natural world, Man 0:12:49.080 --> 0:12:52.880 in Nature became most famous for its description of a 0:12:53.080 --> 0:12:58.080 pattern the author had observed in places as disparate as France, Turkey, 0:12:58.360 --> 0:13:04.640 and China. Rivers had always been crucial to human civilization, 0:13:04.960 --> 0:13:10.040 he wrote, and almost everywhere their origins were in mountains. 0:13:10.880 --> 0:13:14.679 But privatizing mountains the well springs of water that were 0:13:14.679 --> 0:13:18.800 so critical to human development had been a disaster almost everywhere. 0:13:18.840 --> 0:13:22.560 Countries that let it happen. Private interest that logged and 0:13:22.679 --> 0:13:27.600 grazed mountains had destroyed their watersheds and created landscapes that, 0:13:27.920 --> 0:13:31.760 Marsh stead looked like the surface of the moon, ruining 0:13:31.800 --> 0:13:38.240 the possibilities to settle inhabitable valleys below. As a brand 0:13:38.240 --> 0:13:41.240 new country, the US still had time to avoid such 0:13:41.240 --> 0:13:46.240 a mistake. Marsh believed the solution was to remove its 0:13:46.400 --> 0:13:52.000 mountain landscapes from private settlement that would invite overlogging and overgrazing, 0:13:52.400 --> 0:13:56.160 to retain them instead as public preserves to protect the 0:13:56.160 --> 0:14:00.320 West Snow Fountain watersheds, critical for providing water to the 0:14:00.360 --> 0:14:05.240 surrounding arid country. Marsh's book went through eight printings and 0:14:05.320 --> 0:14:09.280 appeared in a new edition in eighteen seventy one, and 0:14:09.320 --> 0:14:12.600 its success brought his argument to the attention of the 0:14:12.720 --> 0:14:16.840 National Association for the Advancement of Science, which in eighteen 0:14:16.920 --> 0:14:24.040 seventy three endorsed Marsh's new policy recommendation. The other author 0:14:24.200 --> 0:14:27.640 was a one armed Civil War veteran who became the 0:14:27.680 --> 0:14:31.880 most famous American explorer of the post war era and 0:14:31.920 --> 0:14:35.400 eventually the most powerful bureaucrat in government in the late century. 0:14:36.320 --> 0:14:39.960 John Wesley Powell had lost an arm at Shiloh, but 0:14:40.120 --> 0:14:43.520 that couldn't prevent him from leading the first party to 0:14:43.600 --> 0:14:47.880 take on the dangerous and unknown descent of the Grand Canyon, 0:14:48.320 --> 0:14:51.920 which he did not once but twice, even serializing the 0:14:51.960 --> 0:14:55.280 account of his adventures in the most popular magazines of 0:14:55.320 --> 0:14:59.400 the day. Then, in eighteen seventy eight, the year before 0:14:59.440 --> 0:15:04.040 he became the director of the new US Geological Survey, 0:15:04.600 --> 0:15:10.080 Powell laid before Congress his masterpiece for rethinking public domain 0:15:10.240 --> 0:15:14.600 policies in America. The lands of the arid region of 0:15:14.640 --> 0:15:20.080 the United States. Didn't exactly endorse Marsh's plan, Powell focused 0:15:20.080 --> 0:15:23.240 more on the diversity of public domain landscapes and why 0:15:23.360 --> 0:15:28.920 Congress should tailor different settlement plans for valleys, foothills, and mountains. 0:15:29.440 --> 0:15:33.080 He even offered up a map of the West, projecting 0:15:33.120 --> 0:15:37.240 a bile regional future for it, with settlement and governments 0:15:37.320 --> 0:15:42.320 organized around rivers and watersheds. Yet, by emphasizing the special 0:15:42.360 --> 0:15:45.480 difficulty settlers were facing in a West that was far 0:15:45.560 --> 0:15:48.440 more desert like than any place Americans had ever tried. 0:15:48.440 --> 0:15:52.560 The homestead. Powell added yet another layer of reasoning why 0:15:52.640 --> 0:15:56.640 protecting the mountain sources of western water was so crucial. 0:15:58.040 --> 0:16:01.080 Powell did point out that press ccidents were already in 0:16:01.120 --> 0:16:04.640 place for public lands in the West from its beginnings 0:16:04.680 --> 0:16:08.880 in the early sixteen hundreds, Spanish colonization in New Mexico 0:16:09.280 --> 0:16:13.040 had made land grants in the high elevation mountains to 0:16:13.200 --> 0:16:17.520 communities settling the valleys below them. These land grants, known 0:16:17.560 --> 0:16:23.520 as aheitos, were used in common for firewood stock grazing, hunting, 0:16:23.920 --> 0:16:28.280 and irrigation of mountain rains and snowpacks by all of 0:16:28.320 --> 0:16:32.640 the residents of the valley towns. Powell also admired a 0:16:32.720 --> 0:16:36.800 different pattern of public lands Mormon settlers in Utah were trying. 0:16:37.200 --> 0:16:41.520 The Mormon approach involved communal sharing of high mountain resources 0:16:41.840 --> 0:16:46.280 carried out through church sanctioned monopolies like the one granted 0:16:46.360 --> 0:16:50.360 to Parley Pratt in the Salt Lake Highlands that still 0:16:50.400 --> 0:16:55.280 today is known as Parley's Canyon. Those managers then made 0:16:55.400 --> 0:16:59.480 the public use of grass, timber, and water available in 0:16:59.520 --> 0:17:05.720 the upland when the interior Department proclaimed US Forest reserves 0:17:05.800 --> 0:17:09.560 in the New Mexico and Utah Mountain Ranges. Both those 0:17:09.640 --> 0:17:13.080 precedents ended up abandoned, although not without a fight. In 0:17:13.119 --> 0:17:17.840 New Mexico, Spanish land grants had passed intact to the 0:17:17.880 --> 0:17:21.760 Republic of Mexico during the twenty seven years that Mexico 0:17:21.840 --> 0:17:25.840 controlled the Southwest. An Article eight of the treaty that 0:17:26.080 --> 0:17:29.920 ended the Mexican War with the US promised full protection 0:17:30.119 --> 0:17:34.199 for those land grants, which by eighteen forty eight blanketed 0:17:34.240 --> 0:17:38.600 almost eighty percent of New Mexico. But American law, with 0:17:38.720 --> 0:17:43.600 its elaborate protections for individual property rights, had little experience 0:17:43.680 --> 0:17:48.000 with the property rights of communities. In the eighteen ninety 0:17:48.040 --> 0:17:52.399 seven Sandivil Decision, the US Supreme Court decided that land 0:17:52.440 --> 0:17:57.320 grants to communities implied such public use that the lands 0:17:57.400 --> 0:18:01.879 granted had actually remained in legal possession of the Spanish 0:18:01.920 --> 0:18:06.400 and Mexican governments, thus were now part of the public 0:18:06.480 --> 0:18:10.800 domain of the United States. The twelve million acres of 0:18:10.880 --> 0:18:13.960 land grants the US did approve in New Mexico were 0:18:14.000 --> 0:18:19.399 those that had gone exclusively to individual grantees. Hence the 0:18:19.480 --> 0:18:24.360 Southern Rockies was cleared for the designation of the Pacos 0:18:24.400 --> 0:18:28.760 and Santa Fe Forest Reserves as part of America's public lands. 0:18:30.320 --> 0:18:34.800 Pacos Forest Reserve, in fact, was already designated before the 0:18:34.920 --> 0:18:39.000 Sandevil case even went before the court. Here's how all 0:18:39.119 --> 0:18:44.560 this public lands happened. In eighteen ninety one, Republican President 0:18:44.640 --> 0:18:49.480 Benjamin Harrison's administration passed an Appropriation's Bill for the General 0:18:49.600 --> 0:18:53.760 Land Office that included a writer that by eighteen ninety 0:18:53.800 --> 0:18:58.520 three would place thirteen million acres of the West Mountains 0:18:58.560 --> 0:19:03.280 off limits to homes and privatization. As has been the 0:19:03.280 --> 0:19:07.119 case for a great many conservation and environmental policies, the 0:19:07.200 --> 0:19:11.960 idea was embraced by both political parties. Before he left office. 0:19:12.000 --> 0:19:16.600 In eighteen ninety seven, Democrat Grover Cleveland added another twenty 0:19:16.640 --> 0:19:21.600 one million acres to the West Forest Reserves. By this point, 0:19:22.119 --> 0:19:26.399 twenty forest reserves lay across the forested mountains of every 0:19:26.480 --> 0:19:30.520 Western state except Nevada, and stretched from the Rockies to 0:19:30.560 --> 0:19:34.399 the Pacific coasts. While private home setting continued on the 0:19:34.400 --> 0:19:37.280 Great Plains and in the Western Valleys. These new high 0:19:37.320 --> 0:19:41.960 elevation public lands, designed originally to protect the West Snow 0:19:42.040 --> 0:19:46.399 Fountain sources of water, now included a total of thirty 0:19:46.520 --> 0:19:52.280 four million acres. This was the beginning in the Sierra Nevadas, 0:19:52.720 --> 0:19:57.760 the Cascades, the Rockies, and numerous detached island mountains in 0:19:57.840 --> 0:20:03.920 the desert west of what evad into America's National Forest system. 0:20:08.880 --> 0:20:12.920 There were still steps remaining in establishing the full foundation. 0:20:13.880 --> 0:20:17.320 Appointed Chief Forester of the Reserves in eighteen ninety eight, 0:20:17.760 --> 0:20:22.359 Yale Gifford Pinchot began work on what became the multiple 0:20:22.560 --> 0:20:27.720 use principle. These lands of many uses, as Pinchot told 0:20:27.800 --> 0:20:31.280 audiences all over the West, wouldn't simply be locked away. 0:20:32.200 --> 0:20:36.000 Planning both for the future and for democratic use. Pinchot 0:20:36.200 --> 0:20:40.480 underlined that the Forest Service would regulate the reserves, but 0:20:40.600 --> 0:20:44.159 they would not be closed off. Instead, they would be 0:20:44.320 --> 0:20:49.560 used for watershed protection, for grazing, for logging, for recreation, 0:20:50.119 --> 0:20:53.760 and since many of the West's remaining animals had fled 0:20:53.800 --> 0:20:58.640 to the mountains, for wildlife habitat, to emphasize that these 0:20:58.720 --> 0:21:01.960 lands now belonged to the American citizens, no matter where 0:21:01.960 --> 0:21:05.360 in the country they lived. In nineteen oh seven, Pinchot 0:21:05.720 --> 0:21:10.480 and President Roosevelt decided to rename them the National Forests. 0:21:11.200 --> 0:21:14.320 This conversion of so much of the American landscape from 0:21:14.400 --> 0:21:19.800 potential private entry to public ownership and federal management had 0:21:19.840 --> 0:21:24.840 already shocked conservatives, who began calling the new policy pink 0:21:25.040 --> 0:21:31.200 tea socialism. So maybe the new National Forests designation lubricated 0:21:31.240 --> 0:21:36.600 the hit somewhat when Roosevelt stunned conservatives by dramatically adding 0:21:36.960 --> 0:21:40.480 one hundred and twenty five million more acres to the system, 0:21:40.840 --> 0:21:43.480 bringing the totals by the time he left office to 0:21:43.720 --> 0:21:49.160 fifty one national forests covering a whopping one hundred fifty 0:21:49.240 --> 0:21:53.720 nine million acres, all of it in the West, and 0:21:53.800 --> 0:21:57.760 Roosevelt wasn't done. The public land system for the West 0:21:57.840 --> 0:22:00.480 and increasingly for small parts of the the rest of 0:22:00.520 --> 0:22:04.600 the country included a new designation made possible by the 0:22:04.680 --> 0:22:09.159 nineteen oh six Antiquities Act, to protect archaeological sites and 0:22:09.240 --> 0:22:14.119 those unusual geologic features like the Grand Canyon. Unlike the 0:22:14.160 --> 0:22:18.520 more complicated creation of national parks, this Act allowed the 0:22:18.600 --> 0:22:23.000 president to make designations out of the public domain, so 0:22:23.160 --> 0:22:28.560 Roosevelt himself proclaimed eighteen of these new national monuments, several 0:22:28.640 --> 0:22:31.919 of which, like the Grand Canyon, went on eventually to 0:22:32.000 --> 0:22:37.280 become national parks. While the United States had pioneered the 0:22:37.480 --> 0:22:41.280 idea and reality of the national park. We had never 0:22:41.480 --> 0:22:46.040 created a National Park Service. Whether the existing national parks 0:22:46.080 --> 0:22:49.639 were intended to last was called into question when, with 0:22:49.720 --> 0:22:54.120 Theodore Roosevelt's blessing, the hetch Hetchy Valley of the Grand 0:22:54.240 --> 0:22:58.439 Canyon of the Tuolomie River and Yosemite National Park became 0:22:58.520 --> 0:23:02.879 the destination of a dam and reservoir to provide water 0:23:02.960 --> 0:23:06.640 for San Francisco. That led to calls for the creation 0:23:07.080 --> 0:23:10.920 of a National Park Service to manage the parks, which 0:23:10.960 --> 0:23:15.960 Congress finally created in nineteen sixteen. By nineteen thirty two, 0:23:16.440 --> 0:23:20.920 the Park Service was administering twenty two National parks and 0:23:21.119 --> 0:23:26.639 thirty six National monuments focused on America's most monumental and 0:23:26.720 --> 0:23:30.480 most vertical scenery, the overwhelming number of the so called 0:23:30.600 --> 0:23:37.720 crown jewels parks like Yellowstone, Glacier, Mount Rainier, Sequoia, Rocky Mountain, 0:23:38.040 --> 0:23:42.560 Grand Canyon, Zion, Mount McKinley, or in the American West. 0:23:43.480 --> 0:23:47.520 The same was true of the monuments, the wildlife refuges, 0:23:47.760 --> 0:23:52.199 the national forests. This was the public land system that 0:23:52.280 --> 0:23:55.919 has made life in the modern West distinctive from life 0:23:56.000 --> 0:23:59.600 elsewhere in America. It was the system that provided the 0:23:59.640 --> 0:24:03.359 habit possible to retain most of the historic bestiary of 0:24:03.440 --> 0:24:07.479 the West's original animals, particularly as big predators, And it 0:24:07.560 --> 0:24:10.360 was the system that made access to the natural world 0:24:10.560 --> 0:24:14.240 a reality for Western citizens, and in the nineteen sixties 0:24:14.240 --> 0:24:19.120 would make setting aside vast wilderness areas and scenic wild 0:24:19.280 --> 0:24:25.240 rivers possible. There would be farms, ranches, and towns located 0:24:25.280 --> 0:24:28.800 around the borders of all these vast expanses of public 0:24:28.880 --> 0:24:33.920 forests and parks, but not within them, despite roads, trails, 0:24:34.320 --> 0:24:41.040 campgrounds tourists within them. Big nature prevailed. Instead of replicating 0:24:41.080 --> 0:24:44.280 the East with the public land settlement in the western 0:24:44.320 --> 0:24:47.320 third of the country, we had angled off on a 0:24:47.400 --> 0:24:53.720 new historical trajectory. Of course, into the nineteen thirties, homesteading 0:24:53.800 --> 0:24:57.560 and private entry continued in some places in the West. 0:24:57.960 --> 0:25:00.600 In fact, there were more Western home stays taken up 0:25:00.600 --> 0:25:04.119 after nineteen hundred than before that year. But with most 0:25:04.240 --> 0:25:08.240 of the West mountains and canyons now public lands, private 0:25:08.320 --> 0:25:11.480 lands were largely at low elevation, and a great many 0:25:11.520 --> 0:25:15.040 were out in the open plains country of states like 0:25:15.160 --> 0:25:19.399 Colorado and Montana. Many of the counties on the Great 0:25:19.400 --> 0:25:25.000 Plains reached their highest all time populations with homesteading in 0:25:25.040 --> 0:25:30.119 the nineteen twenties. But when agricultural prices dropped precipitously after 0:25:30.160 --> 0:25:34.840 the Great War, followed by wind and drought across country 0:25:34.960 --> 0:25:39.320 now plowed and stripped of its protecting grasslands, the policy 0:25:39.359 --> 0:25:43.480 of continuing to privatize the Western public domain began to 0:25:43.640 --> 0:25:47.080 seem like a bad bet and an open invitation for 0:25:47.240 --> 0:25:52.680 human disaster, as the dust Bowl rage from West Texas 0:25:52.760 --> 0:25:57.240 and Oklahoma all the way to eastern Montana and hundreds 0:25:57.320 --> 0:26:01.520 of thousands of people abandoned their homesteads and the words 0:26:01.520 --> 0:26:04.399 of the Woody Guthrie song of the time, so long 0:26:04.520 --> 0:26:07.600 It's been good to know you. In nineteen thirty three, 0:26:08.000 --> 0:26:13.640 the Franklin Roosevelt administration elected to call an end to homesteading. 0:26:15.200 --> 0:26:18.000 It was the end of a grand American tradition that 0:26:18.119 --> 0:26:21.800 was almost one hundred and fifty years old. Whatever further 0:26:21.920 --> 0:26:26.000 privatization of the Western public domain happened was now limited 0:26:26.040 --> 0:26:30.280 to irrigation developments around some of the new Western dams 0:26:30.280 --> 0:26:34.240 and reservoirs. In fact, the US went so far as 0:26:34.320 --> 0:26:39.320 to turn back the clock on a Western ownership society. 0:26:39.440 --> 0:26:44.960 The FED actually resettled thousands of people elsewhere and bought 0:26:45.080 --> 0:26:48.760 back homesteads and a few of the worst wind whip 0:26:48.840 --> 0:26:54.040 and eroded areas, then laboriously replanted them and incorporated them 0:26:54.119 --> 0:26:57.479 back into the public domain in the form of the 0:26:57.640 --> 0:27:03.920 National Grasslands. As for all the unsettled leftover low elevation 0:27:04.119 --> 0:27:06.840 country in the West, two hundred and forty five million 0:27:06.880 --> 0:27:09.800 acres of it, In fact, much of it was true 0:27:09.840 --> 0:27:13.920 desert that the Fed retained in ownership, to be administered 0:27:13.960 --> 0:27:18.320 by a new agency called the Grazing Service, which by 0:27:18.400 --> 0:27:22.520 mid century had become yet another of the West public 0:27:22.680 --> 0:27:30.439 land agencies, the Bureau of Land Management. Like many of 0:27:30.520 --> 0:27:33.639 us who grew up in other regions and when we 0:27:33.720 --> 0:27:36.600 got to live in the public lands West, decided we'd 0:27:36.640 --> 0:27:39.240 died in gone to Heaven. I've done my best to 0:27:39.280 --> 0:27:43.720 take advantage of my unprecedented access to the West natural world. 0:27:44.640 --> 0:27:47.720 I've done three week float trips down the Grand Canyon, 0:27:48.280 --> 0:27:52.600 week long backpacks through the Tuolomy Canyon in Yosemite, packed 0:27:52.600 --> 0:27:56.560 across Montana's Glacier Park from its western boundary to its 0:27:56.600 --> 0:28:00.640 eastern one, and traversed the wilderness of the Wind River 0:28:00.840 --> 0:28:04.760 Range in Wyoming in the opposite direction east to West. 0:28:05.640 --> 0:28:08.000 I've done a twelve day raft trip through the Arctic 0:28:08.080 --> 0:28:12.040 National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska, canoe the wild and Scenic 0:28:12.119 --> 0:28:15.920 Missouri River, climbed Santa fe Baldi in the Southern Rockies 0:28:16.000 --> 0:28:19.960 and the National Forest there, and watched wolves and grizzlies 0:28:20.080 --> 0:28:25.280 in Yellowstone Parks Lamar Valley. Had history turned out differently, 0:28:25.680 --> 0:28:28.280 I guess I could have had experiences like that on 0:28:28.320 --> 0:28:32.359 the Texas High Plains too. The truth is I did 0:28:32.440 --> 0:28:34.760 do such things when I lived in Texas, but I 0:28:34.800 --> 0:28:38.600 had to trespass and outlaw hike to do them. Why 0:28:38.640 --> 0:28:42.840 that was the case requires a story, and I'll close 0:28:42.880 --> 0:28:46.920 here by telling it. The reasons that Texas High Plains 0:28:47.120 --> 0:28:50.080 fall short of being a part of the modern West 0:28:50.640 --> 0:28:54.560 have to do with things that happened in Texas long ago. 0:28:55.080 --> 0:28:59.200 Unlike much of America prior to US annexation in eighteen 0:28:59.360 --> 0:29:04.240 forty five, Texas existed as an independent country for nearly 0:29:04.280 --> 0:29:08.760 a decade. The eighteen thirties was the time when Indian 0:29:08.880 --> 0:29:13.400 removal from the South and East was US policy, and 0:29:13.480 --> 0:29:17.920 the Texas population was almost wholly from the Deep South. 0:29:19.040 --> 0:29:22.320 What followed is the kind of history that just doesn't 0:29:22.400 --> 0:29:26.560 remain in the past, the Republic of Texas committed itself 0:29:26.840 --> 0:29:31.200 to the entire removal of its native population. That's a 0:29:31.240 --> 0:29:36.800 step we'd call ethnic cleansing today. Doing so required considerable 0:29:36.920 --> 0:29:41.840 military effort, which cost money. Texas ended up borrowing from 0:29:41.920 --> 0:29:47.440 Britain and France. So Texas's annexation brought into the US 0:29:47.720 --> 0:29:51.440 a state that had largely banished its Indians, and owed 0:29:51.520 --> 0:29:54.360 so much money for doing so that the United States 0:29:54.440 --> 0:29:58.360 refused to take on the debt. The only solution to 0:29:58.480 --> 0:30:02.240 that was to permit to to retain title to its 0:30:02.360 --> 0:30:08.680 lands and privatize virtually every acre to raise revenue. This 0:30:08.880 --> 0:30:12.440 history is why of the Texas High Plains has no comanches, 0:30:12.800 --> 0:30:18.400 caiawas Cheyennes or apaches all long ago removed to Oklahoma. 0:30:19.320 --> 0:30:23.840 It's why ranches and farms protected by no trespassing signs 0:30:24.120 --> 0:30:28.160