Speaker 1: While it's historical story is what creates the West and
Speaker 1: the eyes of the world, for residents and most visitors today,
Speaker 1: it's the public lands that now define Western life. I'm
Speaker 1: Dan Flores and this is the American West, brought to
Speaker 1: you by Velvet Buck Wine, where the hunt meets the harvest.
Speaker 1: A portion of each bottle goes to support backcountry hunters
Speaker 1: and anglers. Limited supply available at Velvetbuck Vineyards dot com.
Speaker 1: Enjoy responsible New West's Modern West public Lands West. For
Speaker 1: eighteen years of my life, I live full time in
Speaker 1: the state of Texas. I'm not a Texan by birth,
Speaker 1: but rather from old Louisiana families, and living in Texas
Speaker 1: made me understand that you very likely do need to
Speaker 1: be born and raised in that state to fully embrace
Speaker 1: lone Star life. Native born Texans accept at face value
Speaker 1: things about their history and modern existence there that don't
Speaker 1: necessarily resonate if you're from somewhere else. I spent the
Speaker 1: majority of my Texas years in West Texas, but not
Speaker 1: the Big Bend Country or the trans Pacos as it's known.
Speaker 1: I lived in the southern high Plains, most of those
Speaker 1: years in a canyon insized into the state Plain or
Speaker 1: Yano West Taccado, a giant plateau spreading from the Texas
Speaker 1: Panhandle across into eastern New Mexico. Was I living in
Speaker 1: the West in those years? Is Texas part of the West?
Speaker 1: Is West Texas part of the West. Historically Texas is
Speaker 1: as much deep South as West. It was Southerners who
Speaker 1: largely settled it, even West Texas, bringing their culture, religions,
Speaker 1: and a drawl geographically and ecologically. The High Plains certainly
Speaker 1: appear as Western, though, as the celebrated writer Joseph wood
Speaker 1: Krooch put it in his book The Desert Year, as
Speaker 1: he described driving the Texas Panhandle, the red eroded sandstone
Speaker 1: and the cactus declare that this is New Mexico, a
Speaker 1: good many miles before the map makers have recognized the fact.
Speaker 1: So in High Plains Texas there are canyons and cactus
Speaker 1: ranches and rodeos and index finger waves on the highway.
Speaker 1: But as this region the full on modern American West,
Speaker 1: it never seems so to me. And I'll tell you why.
Speaker 1: We all should admit that the West's modern story is
Speaker 1: as impart as it's passed. In terms of what it's
Speaker 1: like to visit are to live in such a celebrated region.
Speaker 1: But it's the West, merely a place with a frontier
Speaker 1: history and the enduring symbols of it. If the presence
Speaker 1: of cowboy hats and pickup trucks as a replacement for
Speaker 1: horses is enough to muster the West, then Texas is in,
Speaker 1: but so is Tennessee. If that's all you need, then
Speaker 1: Austin and Nashville are both Western cities. On the other hand,
Speaker 1: when today's historians identify what makes the West as a
Speaker 1: region different from the rest of America, they put up
Speaker 1: a ven diagram that includes a list like this number
Speaker 1: one with a few exceptions, Like the Pacific Coast. The
Speaker 1: West is defined by aridity, a dryness that exposes geology
Speaker 1: and opens up views to far distances, which it means
Speaker 1: that compared to the rest of America, the West is
Speaker 1: ecologically different or unique. Beyond the ninety eighth meridian of longitude,
Speaker 1: America is forested only on its high mountain ranges or
Speaker 1: in deep canyons. Otherwise, sparse moisture produces grassy prairies and plains, cactus,
Speaker 1: creosote and sagebrush deserts, scattered and dwarfed tree cover of
Speaker 1: pinion and limber pines and junipers. Aridity also produces dry,
Speaker 1: clear air, sparkling nights of polysh stars, and oceans of sunshine.
Speaker 1: Despite the cowboy hats, Nashville fades out rapidly as this
Speaker 1: kind of Western place. Number two. The West is often
Speaker 1: thought of as wide open spaces, but it has featured
Speaker 1: cities like the Great Rock buildings of the Chaco and
Speaker 1: civilization as far back as a thousand years ago. Unlike
Speaker 1: much of the rest of the country, the West cities
Speaker 1: tend to be widely scattered in what geographers call an
Speaker 1: oasis settlement pattern, with vast open lands between. That's still
Speaker 1: true along both sides of the Rockies and even along
Speaker 1: the densely populated Pacific Coast today. Number three. The most
Speaker 1: western of American places tend to be those that still
Speaker 1: retain the continent's original diagnostic wild animals and the ecologies
Speaker 1: they've long shaped with wolf and grizzly bear recovery. In particular,
Speaker 1: the West is the part of the country that retains
Speaker 1: more of its wild keynote species than the rest of
Speaker 1: the country. Number four. The West is still the home
Speaker 1: of most of America's Native people, whose presence is a
Speaker 1: notable feature of the region's cultural imprint and human diversity
Speaker 1: Number five and five. The West is the primary region
Speaker 1: of America's public lands. Whether there are national parks, monuments,
Speaker 1: wildlife refuges, national forests, or national grasslands are Bureau of
Speaker 1: Land Management holdings, The vast majority of the country's public lands,
Speaker 1: wilderness areas, and wild and scenic rivers are in the West.
Speaker 1: Most importantly of all, the presence of the West's public
Speaker 1: lands provides residents and visitors and ability to access the
Speaker 1: natural world to an extent that's rarely a feature of
Speaker 1: modern life in other American regions. So as for the
Speaker 1: high plains of West Texas, it is arid, and in
Speaker 1: the places where its nature is still intact, it is
Speaker 1: ecologically Western. It has cowboys and pickups and a frontier history,
Speaker 1: but it lacks the other three characteristics that make up
Speaker 1: today's American West. The wild bison and wolves and wild
Speaker 1: horses that made up its keystone animals are almost completely gone,
Speaker 1: as are its native peoples entirely long since banished to Oklahoma,
Speaker 1: and the vast percentage of its landscape is not publicly
Speaker 1: accessible but privately owned and often jealously decorated with those
Speaker 1: symbols of the not quite West, angry and belligerent no
Speaker 1: trespassing signs. Next door to Texas, However, in New Mexico,
Speaker 1: twenty one Native tribes live in the state. Mexican wolf
Speaker 1: numbers are at nearly three hundred animals and increasing yearly,
Speaker 1: and compared to Texas is one percent. In New Mexico,
Speaker 1: forty two percent of the state is federally managed. The
Speaker 1: vast bulk of that all but Indian reservations and military
Speaker 1: installations in public and accessible form manage lands in nearby
Speaker 1: Colorado make up thirty seven percent of that state, and
Speaker 1: Wyoming the figure is fifty two percent, and in Montana
Speaker 1: thirty three percent. Arizona's figure is seventy two percent, Utah's
Speaker 1: sixty four percent, and Nevada's eighty percent. Idaho's is at
Speaker 1: sixty two percent, California's forty five percent, Oregon's fifty four percent,
Speaker 1: Washington State's thirty five percent, and Alaska's public lands are
Speaker 1: at eighty nine percent. Texas's federal lands public are not,
Speaker 1: as a reminder, make up one percent of that state.
Speaker 1: The East and the Midwest, they're the percentage of accessible
Speaker 1: nature ranges from one percent to nine percent. The larger
Speaker 1: figure a result of later transplanting of the public lands
Speaker 1: idea from the West to destroyed cutover forest lands in
Speaker 1: the east. Texas has about as much publicly accessible landscape
Speaker 1: as Kansas, Iowa, Illinois, and Indiana, all at one percent
Speaker 1: or less. Recently, an editor of Outside magazine, long based
Speaker 1: in Santa Fe, left the magazine and moved to Austin,
Speaker 1: thinking he was going to a progressive urban part of
Speaker 1: the West in a state with almost no way to
Speaker 1: access the natural world. He didn't last six months before
Speaker 1: moving back to New Mexico. Even among the Great Plain states,
Speaker 1: which like West Texas, have Western aridity and frontier history
Speaker 1: going for them and often do retain native populations, only
Speaker 1: South Dakota, with eighteen percent of its lands federally managed,
Speaker 1: can claim to be fully a part of the modern
Speaker 1: American West. How did this happen with respect to the
Speaker 1: public lands, whose presence or absence plays such a role
Speaker 1: in how one gets to live in the world. It's
Speaker 1: time for me to tell you their creation story, from
Speaker 1: the time of the very first homestead acts designed by
Speaker 1: Thomas Jefferson in the seventeen eighties. The former Indian lands
Speaker 1: that made up the public domain the US was adding
Speaker 1: to the country in the nineteenth century all went into
Speaker 1: the coffers of the General Land Office or GOLO. The
Speaker 1: GOLO offered land for sale or later in history as
Speaker 1: free homesteads or grants to citizens non citizens, and to
Speaker 1: infrastructure building entities like railroads or canal builders. In the
Speaker 1: tradition of the Western European countries, General Land Office holding's
Speaker 1: intended destiny was to become private property through purchases Louisiana, Alaska,
Speaker 1: the Gadsden purchase, diplomatic agreements with Britain for the Northwest,
Speaker 1: for example, treaties for Indian lands, or for ending the
Speaker 1: Mexican War and incorporating the Southwest, and finally annexations like
Speaker 1: Texas and Hawaii. The US acquired an enormous amount of
Speaker 1: real estate between eighteen o three and eighteen ninety eight.
Speaker 1: As various federal expeditions explored those lands and reported on them,
Speaker 1: a prescient handful of Americans began to wonder about privatization
Speaker 1: as a blanket policy aimed so bluntly at such an
Speaker 1: ecologically diverse range of landscapes, even As they did so,
Speaker 1: evolving homestead laws continued to survey, partition and sell our
Speaker 1: grant lands to advancing settlement. Very frequently that settlement took
Speaker 1: place on lands the Indians, who had long owned the
Speaker 1: ground had barely left. During and after the Civil War,
Speaker 1: two influential Americans in particular worried about this privatezation tradition
Speaker 1: in widely read influential volumes. One of those volumes became
Speaker 1: a best seller, the other one a widely discussed congressional report.
Speaker 1: The author of the best seller was an American diplomat
Speaker 1: named George Perkins Marsh, a polymath New Englander who read
Speaker 1: twenty languages and as a result, received diplomatic appointments all
Speaker 1: over the globe. Marsh wrote a book in eighteen sixty
Speaker 1: four he called Man and Nature. In effect, this was
Speaker 1: the first modern history of the environment any writer had
Speaker 1: ever attempted. Although Marsh took on a huge range of
Speaker 1: topics relating to humanity's relationship with the natural world, Man
Speaker 1: in Nature became most famous for its description of a
Speaker 1: pattern the author had observed in places as disparate as France, Turkey,
Speaker 1: and China. Rivers had always been crucial to human civilization,
Speaker 1: he wrote, and almost everywhere their origins were in mountains.
Speaker 1: But privatizing mountains the well springs of water that were
Speaker 1: so critical to human development had been a disaster almost everywhere.
Speaker 1: Countries that let it happen. Private interest that logged and
Speaker 1: grazed mountains had destroyed their watersheds and created landscapes that,
Speaker 1: Marsh stead looked like the surface of the moon, ruining
Speaker 1: the possibilities to settle inhabitable valleys below. As a brand
Speaker 1: new country, the US still had time to avoid such
Speaker 1: a mistake. Marsh believed the solution was to remove its
Speaker 1: mountain landscapes from private settlement that would invite overlogging and overgrazing,
Speaker 1: to retain them instead as public preserves to protect the
Speaker 1: West Snow Fountain watersheds, critical for providing water to the
Speaker 1: surrounding arid country. Marsh's book went through eight printings and
Speaker 1: appeared in a new edition in eighteen seventy one, and
Speaker 1: its success brought his argument to the attention of the
Speaker 1: National Association for the Advancement of Science, which in eighteen
Speaker 1: seventy three endorsed Marsh's new policy recommendation. The other author
Speaker 1: was a one armed Civil War veteran who became the
Speaker 1: most famous American explorer of the post war era and
Speaker 1: eventually the most powerful bureaucrat in government in the late century.
Speaker 1: John Wesley Powell had lost an arm at Shiloh, but
Speaker 1: that couldn't prevent him from leading the first party to
Speaker 1: take on the dangerous and unknown descent of the Grand Canyon,
Speaker 1: which he did not once but twice, even serializing the
Speaker 1: account of his adventures in the most popular magazines of
Speaker 1: the day. Then, in eighteen seventy eight, the year before
Speaker 1: he became the director of the new US Geological Survey,
Speaker 1: Powell laid before Congress his masterpiece for rethinking public domain
Speaker 1: policies in America. The lands of the arid region of
Speaker 1: the United States. Didn't exactly endorse Marsh's plan, Powell focused
Speaker 1: more on the diversity of public domain landscapes and why
Speaker 1: Congress should tailor different settlement plans for valleys, foothills, and mountains.
Speaker 1: He even offered up a map of the West, projecting
Speaker 1: a bile regional future for it, with settlement and governments
Speaker 1: organized around rivers and watersheds. Yet, by emphasizing the special
Speaker 1: difficulty settlers were facing in a West that was far
Speaker 1: more desert like than any place Americans had ever tried.
Speaker 1: The homestead. Powell added yet another layer of reasoning why
Speaker 1: protecting the mountain sources of western water was so crucial.
Speaker 1: Powell did point out that press ccidents were already in
Speaker 1: place for public lands in the West from its beginnings
Speaker 1: in the early sixteen hundreds, Spanish colonization in New Mexico
Speaker 1: had made land grants in the high elevation mountains to
Speaker 1: communities settling the valleys below them. These land grants, known
Speaker 1: as aheitos, were used in common for firewood stock grazing, hunting,
Speaker 1: and irrigation of mountain rains and snowpacks by all of
Speaker 1: the residents of the valley towns. Powell also admired a
Speaker 1: different pattern of public lands Mormon settlers in Utah were trying.
Speaker 1: The Mormon approach involved communal sharing of high mountain resources
Speaker 1: carried out through church sanctioned monopolies like the one granted
Speaker 1: to Parley Pratt in the Salt Lake Highlands that still
Speaker 1: today is known as Parley's Canyon. Those managers then made
Speaker 1: the public use of grass, timber, and water available in
Speaker 1: the upland when the interior Department proclaimed US Forest reserves
Speaker 1: in the New Mexico and Utah Mountain Ranges. Both those
Speaker 1: precedents ended up abandoned, although not without a fight. In
Speaker 1: New Mexico, Spanish land grants had passed intact to the
Speaker 1: Republic of Mexico during the twenty seven years that Mexico
Speaker 1: controlled the Southwest. An Article eight of the treaty that
Speaker 1: ended the Mexican War with the US promised full protection
Speaker 1: for those land grants, which by eighteen forty eight blanketed
Speaker 1: almost eighty percent of New Mexico. But American law, with
Speaker 1: its elaborate protections for individual property rights, had little experience
Speaker 1: with the property rights of communities. In the eighteen ninety
Speaker 1: seven Sandivil Decision, the US Supreme Court decided that land
Speaker 1: grants to communities implied such public use that the lands
Speaker 1: granted had actually remained in legal possession of the Spanish
Speaker 1: and Mexican governments, thus were now part of the public
Speaker 1: domain of the United States. The twelve million acres of
Speaker 1: land grants the US did approve in New Mexico were
Speaker 1: those that had gone exclusively to individual grantees. Hence the
Speaker 1: Southern Rockies was cleared for the designation of the Pacos
Speaker 1: and Santa Fe Forest Reserves as part of America's public lands.
Speaker 1: Pacos Forest Reserve, in fact, was already designated before the
Speaker 1: Sandevil case even went before the court. Here's how all
Speaker 1: this public lands happened. In eighteen ninety one, Republican President
Speaker 1: Benjamin Harrison's administration passed an Appropriation's Bill for the General
Speaker 1: Land Office that included a writer that by eighteen ninety
Speaker 1: three would place thirteen million acres of the West Mountains
Speaker 1: off limits to homes and privatization. As has been the
Speaker 1: case for a great many conservation and environmental policies, the
Speaker 1: idea was embraced by both political parties. Before he left office.
Speaker 1: In eighteen ninety seven, Democrat Grover Cleveland added another twenty
Speaker 1: one million acres to the West Forest Reserves. By this point,
Speaker 1: twenty forest reserves lay across the forested mountains of every
Speaker 1: Western state except Nevada, and stretched from the Rockies to
Speaker 1: the Pacific coasts. While private home setting continued on the
Speaker 1: Great Plains and in the Western Valleys. These new high
Speaker 1: elevation public lands, designed originally to protect the West Snow
Speaker 1: Fountain sources of water, now included a total of thirty
Speaker 1: four million acres. This was the beginning in the Sierra Nevadas,
Speaker 1: the Cascades, the Rockies, and numerous detached island mountains in
Speaker 1: the desert west of what evad into America's National Forest system.
Speaker 1: There were still steps remaining in establishing the full foundation.
Speaker 1: Appointed Chief Forester of the Reserves in eighteen ninety eight,
Speaker 1: Yale Gifford Pinchot began work on what became the multiple
Speaker 1: use principle. These lands of many uses, as Pinchot told
Speaker 1: audiences all over the West, wouldn't simply be locked away.
Speaker 1: Planning both for the future and for democratic use. Pinchot
Speaker 1: underlined that the Forest Service would regulate the reserves, but
Speaker 1: they would not be closed off. Instead, they would be
Speaker 1: used for watershed protection, for grazing, for logging, for recreation,
Speaker 1: and since many of the West's remaining animals had fled
Speaker 1: to the mountains, for wildlife habitat, to emphasize that these
Speaker 1: lands now belonged to the American citizens, no matter where
Speaker 1: in the country they lived. In nineteen oh seven, Pinchot
Speaker 1: and President Roosevelt decided to rename them the National Forests.
Speaker 1: This conversion of so much of the American landscape from
Speaker 1: potential private entry to public ownership and federal management had
Speaker 1: already shocked conservatives, who began calling the new policy pink
Speaker 1: tea socialism. So maybe the new National Forests designation lubricated
Speaker 1: the hit somewhat when Roosevelt stunned conservatives by dramatically adding
Speaker 1: one hundred and twenty five million more acres to the system,
Speaker 1: bringing the totals by the time he left office to
Speaker 1: fifty one national forests covering a whopping one hundred fifty
Speaker 1: nine million acres, all of it in the West, and
Speaker 1: Roosevelt wasn't done. The public land system for the West
Speaker 1: and increasingly for small parts of the the rest of
Speaker 1: the country included a new designation made possible by the
Speaker 1: nineteen oh six Antiquities Act, to protect archaeological sites and
Speaker 1: those unusual geologic features like the Grand Canyon. Unlike the
Speaker 1: more complicated creation of national parks, this Act allowed the
Speaker 1: president to make designations out of the public domain, so
Speaker 1: Roosevelt himself proclaimed eighteen of these new national monuments, several
Speaker 1: of which, like the Grand Canyon, went on eventually to
Speaker 1: become national parks. While the United States had pioneered the
Speaker 1: idea and reality of the national park. We had never
Speaker 1: created a National Park Service. Whether the existing national parks
Speaker 1: were intended to last was called into question when, with
Speaker 1: Theodore Roosevelt's blessing, the hetch Hetchy Valley of the Grand
Speaker 1: Canyon of the Tuolomie River and Yosemite National Park became
Speaker 1: the destination of a dam and reservoir to provide water
Speaker 1: for San Francisco. That led to calls for the creation
Speaker 1: of a National Park Service to manage the parks, which
Speaker 1: Congress finally created in nineteen sixteen. By nineteen thirty two,
Speaker 1: the Park Service was administering twenty two National parks and
Speaker 1: thirty six National monuments focused on America's most monumental and
Speaker 1: most vertical scenery, the overwhelming number of the so called
Speaker 1: crown jewels parks like Yellowstone, Glacier, Mount Rainier, Sequoia, Rocky Mountain,
Speaker 1: Grand Canyon, Zion, Mount McKinley, or in the American West.
Speaker 1: The same was true of the monuments, the wildlife refuges,
Speaker 1: the national forests. This was the public land system that
Speaker 1: has made life in the modern West distinctive from life
Speaker 1: elsewhere in America. It was the system that provided the
Speaker 1: habit possible to retain most of the historic bestiary of
Speaker 1: the West's original animals, particularly as big predators, And it
Speaker 1: was the system that made access to the natural world
Speaker 1: a reality for Western citizens, and in the nineteen sixties
Speaker 1: would make setting aside vast wilderness areas and scenic wild
Speaker 1: rivers possible. There would be farms, ranches, and towns located
Speaker 1: around the borders of all these vast expanses of public
Speaker 1: forests and parks, but not within them, despite roads, trails,
Speaker 1: campgrounds tourists within them. Big nature prevailed. Instead of replicating
Speaker 1: the East with the public land settlement in the western
Speaker 1: third of the country, we had angled off on a
Speaker 1: new historical trajectory. Of course, into the nineteen thirties, homesteading
Speaker 1: and private entry continued in some places in the West.
Speaker 1: In fact, there were more Western home stays taken up
Speaker 1: after nineteen hundred than before that year. But with most
Speaker 1: of the West mountains and canyons now public lands, private
Speaker 1: lands were largely at low elevation, and a great many
Speaker 1: were out in the open plains country of states like
Speaker 1: Colorado and Montana. Many of the counties on the Great
Speaker 1: Plains reached their highest all time populations with homesteading in
Speaker 1: the nineteen twenties. But when agricultural prices dropped precipitously after
Speaker 1: the Great War, followed by wind and drought across country
Speaker 1: now plowed and stripped of its protecting grasslands, the policy
Speaker 1: of continuing to privatize the Western public domain began to
Speaker 1: seem like a bad bet and an open invitation for
Speaker 1: human disaster, as the dust Bowl rage from West Texas
Speaker 1: and Oklahoma all the way to eastern Montana and hundreds
Speaker 1: of thousands of people abandoned their homesteads and the words
Speaker 1: of the Woody Guthrie song of the time, so long
Speaker 1: It's been good to know you. In nineteen thirty three,
Speaker 1: the Franklin Roosevelt administration elected to call an end to homesteading.
Speaker 1: It was the end of a grand American tradition that
Speaker 1: was almost one hundred and fifty years old. Whatever further
Speaker 1: privatization of the Western public domain happened was now limited
Speaker 1: to irrigation developments around some of the new Western dams
Speaker 1: and reservoirs. In fact, the US went so far as
Speaker 1: to turn back the clock on a Western ownership society.
Speaker 1: The FED actually resettled thousands of people elsewhere and bought
Speaker 1: back homesteads and a few of the worst wind whip
Speaker 1: and eroded areas, then laboriously replanted them and incorporated them
Speaker 1: back into the public domain in the form of the
Speaker 1: National Grasslands. As for all the unsettled leftover low elevation
Speaker 1: country in the West, two hundred and forty five million
Speaker 1: acres of it, In fact, much of it was true
Speaker 1: desert that the Fed retained in ownership, to be administered
Speaker 1: by a new agency called the Grazing Service, which by
Speaker 1: mid century had become yet another of the West public
Speaker 1: land agencies, the Bureau of Land Management. Like many of
Speaker 1: us who grew up in other regions and when we
Speaker 1: got to live in the public lands West, decided we'd
Speaker 1: died in gone to Heaven. I've done my best to
Speaker 1: take advantage of my unprecedented access to the West natural world.
Speaker 1: I've done three week float trips down the Grand Canyon,
Speaker 1: week long backpacks through the Tuolomy Canyon in Yosemite, packed
Speaker 1: across Montana's Glacier Park from its western boundary to its
Speaker 1: eastern one, and traversed the wilderness of the Wind River
Speaker 1: Range in Wyoming in the opposite direction east to West.
Speaker 1: I've done a twelve day raft trip through the Arctic
Speaker 1: National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska, canoe the wild and Scenic
Speaker 1: Missouri River, climbed Santa fe Baldi in the Southern Rockies
Speaker 1: and the National Forest there, and watched wolves and grizzlies
Speaker 1: in Yellowstone Parks Lamar Valley. Had history turned out differently,
Speaker 1: I guess I could have had experiences like that on
Speaker 1: the Texas High Plains too. The truth is I did
Speaker 1: do such things when I lived in Texas, but I
Speaker 1: had to trespass and outlaw hike to do them. Why
Speaker 1: that was the case requires a story, and I'll close
Speaker 1: here by telling it. The reasons that Texas High Plains
Speaker 1: fall short of being a part of the modern West
Speaker 1: have to do with things that happened in Texas long ago.
Speaker 1: Unlike much of America prior to US annexation in eighteen
Speaker 1: forty five, Texas existed as an independent country for nearly
Speaker 1: a decade. The eighteen thirties was the time when Indian
Speaker 1: removal from the South and East was US policy, and
Speaker 1: the Texas population was almost wholly from the Deep South.
Speaker 1: What followed is the kind of history that just doesn't
Speaker 1: remain in the past, the Republic of Texas committed itself
Speaker 1: to the entire removal of its native population. That's a
Speaker 1: step we'd call ethnic cleansing today. Doing so required considerable
Speaker 1: military effort, which cost money. Texas ended up borrowing from
Speaker 1: Britain and France. So Texas's annexation brought into the US
Speaker 1: a state that had largely banished its Indians, and owed
Speaker 1: so much money for doing so that the United States
Speaker 1: refused to take on the debt. The only solution to
Speaker 1: that was to permit to to retain title to its
Speaker 1: lands and privatize virtually every acre to raise revenue. This
Speaker 1: history is why of the Texas High Plains has no comanches,
Speaker 1: caiawas Cheyennes or apaches all long ago removed to Oklahoma.
Speaker 1: It's why ranches and farms protected by no trespassing signs
Speaker 1: occupy almost every parcel of ground. Why there was little
Speaker 1: or no habitat for buffalo and none at all for wolves.
Speaker 1: And it's a powerful reason why the Texas High Plains
Speaker 1: missed out on its one grand chance to join the
Speaker 1: public Lands West. And it did have a chance. In
Speaker 1: the nineteen thirties, National park personnel looking for new parks
Speaker 1: began to pay attention to ecologist interest in the overlooked
Speaker 1: Great Plains. No landscapes on the Great Plains measured up
Speaker 1: to the monumental scenery of a Yosemite or Grand Canyon,
Speaker 1: and most of the plains was now in private hands.
Speaker 1: But the Park Service hoped to overcome those obstacles, and
Speaker 1: Palo Duro Canyon, a sixty mile long, thousand foot deep
Speaker 1: roar of color where the Red River carved through the
Speaker 1: high plains. Plateau, was historically a famous Western landscape, a
Speaker 1: Comanche hideaway, and home to legendary Texas ranger Charles Goodnight's Ranch.
Speaker 1: Tommy Lee Jones's Captain Call in Lonesome Dove is a
Speaker 1: portrayal of good Night. By the way, Palo Duro seemed
Speaker 1: a perfect locale for a large Great Plains park. The
Speaker 1: emerging artist Georgia O'Keeffe exhibited paintings of it in New
Speaker 1: York in nineteen seventeen, and when one of its ranches
Speaker 1: opened its gates to the public, fourteen thousand people showed
Speaker 1: up to see the canyon. Texas was planning a small
Speaker 1: state park there, and Palo Duro as a national park,
Speaker 1: had champions in Texas and beyond, one of which was
Speaker 1: Enos Mills, the so called John Muir of the Rockies.
Speaker 1: In the nineteen thirties, a man named Roger Toll was
Speaker 1: a kind of one man, naked or break it investigator
Speaker 1: for the National Park Service, and in nineteen thirty three
Speaker 1: and thirty four he was touring Texas to assess potential
Speaker 1: national parks. Now, the Park Service had no acquisition budget
Speaker 1: to acquire private lands to create parks. All the existing
Speaker 1: parks had been created from the public lands, but it
Speaker 1: hoped that, as had happened back east for Acadia, Great
Speaker 1: Smoky Mountains and Shenandoah Parks, locals would raise the money
Speaker 1: to acquire the land. As told journey to Texas. In Washington,
Speaker 1: park personnel were assembling maps and materials for the creation
Speaker 1: of a million acre National Park of the plains around
Speaker 1: Palo Duro, a huge park half the size of Yellowstone.
Speaker 1: But after spending four days in the canyon, including visiting
Speaker 1: its most scenic and dramatic side gorge, the Tulee Narrows,
Speaker 1: Told decided that Palo Duro would rate below the present
Speaker 1: scenic national parks. He was also concerned about real essate
Speaker 1: values in Texas and whether Texans would come up with
Speaker 1: the money to acquire the canyon. The West Texas Canyon
Speaker 1: had now caught the eye of the National Park Service, though,
Speaker 1: and the new idea was for a national monument based
Speaker 1: on Palo Duro's geological uniqueness, a kind of first Chapter
Speaker 1: of Genesis national Monument for tourists heading west on the
Speaker 1: Mother Road Route sixty six. So in October of nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty eight and thirty nine, the Park Service initiated a
Speaker 1: second review of Palo Duro. This time, the idea was
Speaker 1: for a more modest Southern High Plains National mind of
Speaker 1: roughly one hundred and thirty five thousand acres. The final
Speaker 1: report included an estimate of the acquisition costs some two
Speaker 1: hundred ninety four thousand dollars, plus another two hundred and
Speaker 1: sixty four thousand to fold in the fifteen thousand acre
Speaker 1: state park. The monument boundaries excluded Touley Canyon and its
Speaker 1: spectacular gorge, but hopes for future expansion were already eyeing
Speaker 1: that section as The report that hoped to make the
Speaker 1: Texas High Plains part of the Public Lands West put
Speaker 1: it from the standpoint of geology and scenery. Palo Duro
Speaker 1: is well worthy of being made into a national monument.
Speaker 1: It's the most spectacular canyon carved by erosion anywhere on
Speaker 1: the Great Plains of North America. When word of the
Speaker 1: proposal got out, there was public support, all right, but
Speaker 1: it was mostly from Denver, Albuquerque, and Oklahoma City. Texans
Speaker 1: seemed oddly ambivalent. No wealthy oil visionary from the lone
Speaker 1: Star state stepped forward the way the Rockefellers were then
Speaker 1: doing in Jackson Hole to create Grand Tetai National Park.
Speaker 1: So ambivalents or apathy are more likely. Ideological opposition to
Speaker 1: public lands in a state unfamiliar with that idea killed
Speaker 1: this main chance. Texas's State Park Division has since double
Speaker 1: Pallo Duro State Park the thirty thousand acres, although without
Speaker 1: making the wilder parts of it accessible with trails and camps,
Speaker 1: and it's created a second sixteen thousand acre park, Caprock
Speaker 1: Canyon Lands, thirty five miles to the south. Caproc is
Speaker 1: beautiful and wild and has a free roaming bison herd.
Speaker 1: But these state parks just aren't extensive enough to make
Speaker 1: the Texas High Plains a public lands region. In our time,
Speaker 1: the passion for life in the modern public lands West
Speaker 1: is powerfully evident. When the Trump administration in twenty twenty
Speaker 1: five tried to insert a partial dissolution of the Western
Speaker 1: public lands as part of the so called Big Beautiful Bill,
Speaker 1: the outcry in the West was deafening. It came from
Speaker 1: both the left and the right, from hunters, environmentalists, ecologists,
Speaker 1: and day hikers. In Santa Fe, where the Western Governor's
Speaker 1: Conference was held in June twenty twenty five, a pro
Speaker 1: public lands protests of thousands filled the streets and drowned
Speaker 1: out the conference in this Western capital city for hours.
Speaker 1: The conclusion from events like this is inescapable. A century
Speaker 1: of Western lifestyles formed by and built around public lands
Speaker 1: has now entirely transformed this American region and made it
Speaker 1: distinctive in the United States and the world. It turns
Speaker 1: out the public lands have created the American West just
Speaker 1: as much as its frontier history ever did.
Speaker 2: I wanted to kick this off with a little personal anecdote.
Speaker 2: When I was in college and finishing up, I wanted
Speaker 2: to go bear hunting, and I looked online and I
Speaker 2: saw I could buy a bear tag in Montana for
Speaker 2: like two hundred dollars, and I thought, where do you
Speaker 2: go hunting? Once you get out to Montana? And when
Speaker 2: I was growing up, you know, we'd in all the
Speaker 2: National parks trips and Benda Glacier and Yellowstone and everything
Speaker 2: like that. But I very distinctly have a moment of
Speaker 2: looking at a map and thinking, I wonder if I
Speaker 2: can hunt in these national forests and going online. And
Speaker 2: this is before the days of you know, podcasts and
Speaker 2: online research tools for hunters and everything, and I looked
Speaker 2: up can you hunt in National forces?
Speaker 3: And I got the answer yes.
Speaker 2: And then I started looking at all the national forests
Speaker 2: across the West, and it was like, you know, the
Speaker 2: scales came off my eyes or whatever biblical metaphor is appropriate,
Speaker 2: because I was just thinking, holy shit, there's a whole
Speaker 2: world out there that I can just go to and
Speaker 2: check out, you know, having come from a place where
Speaker 2: we deer hunted on ten acre chunks and twenty acre chunks.
Speaker 1: And in this.
Speaker 2: Chapter you talk about how that shapes a person knowing
Speaker 2: that they have access to these spaces and that they
Speaker 2: can go out and sort of discover things and discover
Speaker 2: things about themselves on these landscapes. So I wonder if
Speaker 2: you could just talk about your first moment where you
Speaker 2: sort of realized what the implications of these public lands
Speaker 2: had for your life.
Speaker 1: Well, I grew up in theis Louisiana, as you know,
Speaker 1: and and I began at some point, and again it
Speaker 1: was out of the same sort of experiences where once
Speaker 1: family takes you off to the West and see to
Speaker 1: see national parks and things like that. But I was
Speaker 1: four years old when I went off on a trip
Speaker 1: like that, so I wasn't really able to comprehend much
Speaker 1: about the world other than while the West sure seems
Speaker 1: to be sunny and beautiful compared to the Louisiana, which
Speaker 1: is so green and close in. But I basically when
Speaker 1: I got to the West, when I first started going,
Speaker 1: and it was in my late teens and early twenties,
Speaker 1: because I was fascinated with the West, and as soon
Speaker 1: as I could drive a car and my parents would
Speaker 1: let me take a car overnight, I mean immediately drove
Speaker 1: off towards New Mexico and Colorado to go see the country,
Speaker 1: and then made that kind of a summer road trip
Speaker 1: every summer from then on all through my twenties and thirties.
Speaker 1: What I began to realize, is that you know? And
Speaker 1: I remember there was a line from an Aldo Leopold passage,
Speaker 1: I think it was probably from a San County almanac
Speaker 1: where he said, of what use are forty freedoms if
Speaker 1: you don't have a world to get into? And what
Speaker 1: I recognized about that statement was that he was describing
Speaker 1: this situation I had grown up in where so much
Speaker 1: of the world is off limits, it's fenced, it's posted,
Speaker 1: you can't get at it. And suddenly, here's a part
Speaker 1: of America, and it seemed like, in some respects the
Speaker 1: best part of America, the grandest mountains, the deepest canyons,
Speaker 1: the most extensive plains, the most starlit skies at night,
Speaker 1: that was open to the world. And so it was
Speaker 1: kind of it was one of those moments, one of
Speaker 1: those precious moments in life, when I suddenly realized, holy cow,
Speaker 1: here is an opportunity and a place in the country
Speaker 1: I grew up in to be able to get at
Speaker 1: the world in a way I've never been able to
Speaker 1: do so. So that was provided by the public lands
Speaker 1: of the West, and that made me really intrigued by
Speaker 1: this topic. And one of the things I did in
Speaker 1: my career as a writer who was interested in environmental
Speaker 1: issues was to try to figure out how that happened.
Speaker 1: How did the West get these public lands and what
Speaker 1: does that mean? Because obviously it produces a different kind
Speaker 1: of lifestyle where you have access to the world than
Speaker 1: when you don't. And so that's what this particular episode
Speaker 1: and script are about, is to explain how this happened.
Speaker 1: And it's the kind of thing that didn't happen everywhere.
Speaker 1: I mean, one of the reasons I use Texas, where
Speaker 1: I live for for a number of years as an
Speaker 1: example is Texas was a piece of America that had
Speaker 1: a different history and a different trajectory than the rest
Speaker 1: of the American West did, and it ended up in
Speaker 1: a very different situation.
Speaker 2: And you point out early on that public lands or something,
Speaker 2: and the story of public lands sort of bends back
Speaker 2: against what the founding fathers and vision, right, And when
Speaker 2: you think about Jefferson and his vision for the future,
Speaker 2: this is something that was just a blind spot, not
Speaker 2: to you know, be a historical here, but there's sort
Speaker 2: of a blind spot. It's not something that the founders
Speaker 2: would ever have dreamed of, right it And it almost
Speaker 2: runs counter to their values, and yet there's this moment.
Speaker 3: At which.
Speaker 2: Sort of a utilitarian there's like two forces at work
Speaker 2: here that combine to really create the system of public land.
Speaker 2: And there's a utilitarian lens, and then there's also sort
Speaker 2: of this more idealistic conservation or preservationist lens as well.
Speaker 1: Bush produces the National Parks on the one hand, the latter,
Speaker 1: and something like the Bureau of Land Management tracts and
Speaker 1: National forests on the other hand. Yeah, I think that's
Speaker 1: a good way to think of it, Randall. From the beginning,
Speaker 1: of course, Jefferson, who designs the first homestead acts with
Speaker 1: the you know, the seventeen eighty five and seventeen eighty
Speaker 1: seven declarations about how we're going to survey land and
Speaker 1: we're going to offer it for sale to the public.
Speaker 1: He envisioned a nation of yeoman farmers, as he said,
Speaker 1: who would sweep across the continent and do this from
Speaker 1: shore to shore. What circumvented that from playing out to
Speaker 1: its logical conclusion where everything gets privatized was the realization
Speaker 1: when people unlike Jefferson, who never saw the west, actually
Speaker 1: were there and began looking at the landscape west of
Speaker 1: the hundredth meridian, which was so completely different from the
Speaker 1: landscapes east of that line, is that this may not
Speaker 1: be a smart thing to do. It may not be
Speaker 1: a good idea to put somebody on a homestead, for example,
Speaker 1: out in the sagebrush deserts of what becomes Nevada. And
Speaker 1: what really sort of sparked the whole idea was the
Speaker 1: insight of people like George Perkins Marsh who had traveled
Speaker 1: the world and realized in most of the world, because
Speaker 1: rivers are so important, especially in arid countries, their origins
Speaker 1: in mountains have to be protected. You have to make
Speaker 1: sure that mountains don't end up overgrazesed, overlogged, torn up,
Speaker 1: because that makes it impossible really to regulate the water
Speaker 1: that can function to provide for towns and cities in
Speaker 1: the valleys below them. So it was George Perkins Marsh
Speaker 1: with his I mean, it's a monumental book that all
Speaker 1: Americans I don't know about. It's called Man in Nature,
Speaker 1: published in eighteen sixty four during the Civil War. It's
Speaker 1: the first book that really engages with the kind of
Speaker 1: topics that one would think of as being the history
Speaker 1: of people and the environment and One of the arguments
Speaker 1: that he makes in that book is that while America
Speaker 1: still has the opportunity, and we still do, because settlement
Speaker 1: is just now proceeding to the Rockies, the Cascades, the
Speaker 1: Sierra Nevadas, we should stop and think about whether or
Speaker 1: not we want to privatize that part of the world.
Speaker 1: Should probably try to hold on to it as in
Speaker 1: public ownership and manage it for water, because water is
Speaker 1: so critical in the aired West, and that'll make it
Speaker 1: possible to settle all these valley lands at lower elevation.
Speaker 1: And of course, along with along with George Perkins Marsh,
Speaker 1: there was John Wisley Powell, who was intimately becoming familiar
Speaker 1: with the West, floating the Grand Canyon and taking students
Speaker 1: all over the West, from Colorado to Montana and Idaho,
Speaker 1: and who was putting together as the first director of
Speaker 1: the United States Geological Survey, these kinds of plans where
Speaker 1: here's how we ought to be settling an arid region.
Speaker 1: The east is not aird, this country is arid, and
Speaker 1: here's how we ought to do it. I mean one
Speaker 1: of the things, of course that he comes up with,
Speaker 1: which we didn't implement, but I mean a lot of
Speaker 1: people have looked at those maps that Powell drew in
Speaker 1: eighteen seventy eight and eighteen seventy nine for a kind
Speaker 1: of a bioregional West where everything political is evaluated and
Speaker 1: based on water. I mean, you have what he sort
Speaker 1: of put together as little commonwealths on the Arkansas River,
Speaker 1: on the Platte River, on the Missouri River. I mean
Speaker 1: it was a remarkable kind of way to and what
Speaker 1: you realized out of it is, well, this is a
Speaker 1: brand new opportunity to do something completely different from what
Speaker 1: has prevailed and the rest of the United States. And
Speaker 1: so we ended up with, you know, with a more
Speaker 1: George Perkins marsh kind of plan. But I think Powell's
Speaker 1: input into it was really critical, and that of course,
Speaker 1: as you said at the outset, this is all a
Speaker 1: very different plan than what the founders had in mind,
Speaker 1: where they thought that we were just going to privatize
Speaker 1: all the pieces of land that we got from wars,
Speaker 1: from annexation, from treaties with native people. We were just
Speaker 1: going to privatize it all and turn it over to settlement. Instead,
Speaker 1: we ended up with something very different. Yeah, and.
Speaker 2: Use the word plan a couple times there, but I
Speaker 2: think One of the more interesting aspects of this story
Speaker 2: is how sort of piecemeal and fitfully developed our public
Speaker 2: lands system is. You know, it's like you look at
Speaker 2: it and aggregate and you're like, God, this is the
Speaker 2: foresight to have all this together. But really, you know,
Speaker 2: you're reading along and these people aren't thinking more than
Speaker 2: five or ten years ahead of themselves in terms of institutionally,
Speaker 2: how does this work and legally how does this work?
Speaker 2: And so you know, I wonder if you could speak
Speaker 2: to that, Like the Park Service isn't established till nineteen sixteen,
Speaker 2: but obviously Yellowstone goes, yeah, predates that by you know,
Speaker 2: forty five years or so.
Speaker 3: Forty years or so.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean that's so. One of the things you
Speaker 1: have to recognize about the public lands is that they
Speaker 1: constitute a lot of different kinds of parcels. I mean,
Speaker 1: we've been talking about in the George Perkins Marsh Angle
Speaker 1: is what becomes the National Forest, which are in the
Speaker 1: mountains of the West and are designed to protect stream
Speaker 1: flow and water. In the beginning, and as you mentioned,
Speaker 1: it's a piecemeal way of doing it. We start with
Speaker 1: thirteen million acres in about a dozen forest reserves, as
Speaker 1: their first call under the Benjamin Harrison administration, and then
Speaker 1: we run the number up to about thirty four million
Speaker 1: before the turn of the century. And then Teddy Roosevelt
Speaker 1: comes in, of course, and he just dramatically expands that system.
Speaker 1: But that's just one version, and that becomes kind of,
Speaker 1: in a way, the poster public lands, because the national
Speaker 1: forests are managed for multiple uses. As Gifford Pinchot, that
Speaker 1: forester comes in and develops the idea of multiple use,
Speaker 1: we're going to used the national forests for We're going
Speaker 1: to log some and we're going to use We're going
Speaker 1: to have regulated grazing, and we're going to have a
Speaker 1: variety of different uses. Of course, wildlife, habitat and recreation
Speaker 1: become the ones that are really important for the modern West.
Speaker 1: But that's just one form of public lands. Because you
Speaker 1: have the national parks, which had existed before, we end
Speaker 1: up with a National Park Act and a National Park system.
Speaker 1: You have in nineteen oh six, the Antiquities Act produces
Speaker 1: what's called the opportunity for the President by presidential edict
Speaker 1: to create national monuments, and the National Monument system, which
Speaker 1: is managed by the Park Service, ultimately is going to
Speaker 1: be another one of these dramatic pieces of public lands
Speaker 1: in the West out of the dust Bowl from the
Speaker 1: nineteen thirties, when a lot of the homesteads end up
Speaker 1: being bought back from homesteaders as failures by the federal government,
Speaker 1: you get a kind of public lands out on the
Speaker 1: plains called the National Grasslands. And then, of course when
Speaker 1: you get to the nineteen thirties, and we've determined after
Speaker 1: the dust bowl has hit that it's really a kind
Speaker 1: of a crime and a tragedy to allow people to
Speaker 1: continue to try to settle some of these really arid
Speaker 1: planes and desert regions of the West. During the Franklin
Speaker 1: Roosevelt administration, we end home setting there's still two hundred
Speaker 1: and forty five million acres of public domain left, and
Speaker 1: that land ultimately ends up as Bureau of Land Management tracks.
Speaker 1: So it's a bunch of obviously there are a bunch
Speaker 1: of different kinds of public lands in that mix, but
Speaker 1: the whole of it ends up. As I was writing
Speaker 1: this particular script, and I don't think this had ever
Speaker 1: occurred to me before, but it did when I was
Speaker 1: writing this script, and I think it's one of the
Speaker 1: last lines I use in the script itself. It seems
Speaker 1: to me that the existence of the public lands in
Speaker 1: the West is as important, maybe more important, than the
Speaker 1: existence of a frontier history that sort of defines what
Speaker 1: the West is. One is obviously more nineteenth century phenomenon,
Speaker 1: the other twenty first and more modernist kind of phenomenon.
Speaker 1: But I think the public lands may be more important
Speaker 1: for the West than even the frontier.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and there's also, as you mentioned earlier, there's the
Speaker 2: Texas story where it has a very different history, and
Speaker 2: then if we look east across the Mississippi, there's a
Speaker 2: very different story there. But in the West we think
Speaker 2: of public lands as these places that were left behind,
Speaker 2: whereas in the East they had to sort of, after
Speaker 2: the fact assemble national forests. Yes, and you have the
Speaker 2: Weeks Act, and it's a very deliberate the model of
Speaker 2: construction that had to be sort of invented to reconstitute
Speaker 2: what once was. Yeah, that's exactly right.
Speaker 1: I mean, the Weeks Act of nineteen ten basically takes
Speaker 1: the idea of the public lands in the West and
Speaker 1: applies them when possible to the east, particularly the mountains
Speaker 1: of the East. In this case, it's the kind of
Speaker 1: phenomenon where you're taking lands that had usually been ruined
Speaker 1: by timber companies and had been cut over, and the
Speaker 1: government will then acquire those lands and create national forests
Speaker 1: around them. So that's how we get the national forests,
Speaker 1: for example, up and down the Appalachian Crest, the Shenandoah
Speaker 1: into upstate New York, obviously in the Adirondacks, along with
Speaker 1: the State Park and the Aarandacks. And then there of
Speaker 1: course are some parks that because the Park Service did
Speaker 1: not have an acquisition budget creating these national parks and
Speaker 1: national monuments out of free public domain land. Park Service
Speaker 1: didn't have a budget to acquire lands that had already
Speaker 1: been sold to somebody. What you got in parts of
Speaker 1: the East, and this is what I told the story
Speaker 1: of in Texas, in West Texas that was a failure
Speaker 1: to do is the public got behind the idea of
Speaker 1: producing the money to buy up lands to create Akkadian
Speaker 1: National Park in Maine, Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Shenandoah
Speaker 1: in West Texas, though we had this wonderful opportunity to
Speaker 1: take a landscape that was western in its psychology, frontier
Speaker 1: in its history. I mean to be sure, in Texas.
Speaker 1: All the Indians had been driven out, so you didn't
Speaker 1: have that opportunity for a modern West. But there was
Speaker 1: the opportunity for creating a big public lands on the
Speaker 1: high plains of West Texas, but it didn't happen. And
Speaker 1: it's an interesting kind of miss to me in American history.
Speaker 1: You know, I don't I can't speak to how the
Speaker 1: people of the southern high Plains feel about that miss,
Speaker 1: if they even know about it or remember it. And
Speaker 1: I suspect a lot of people don't even know about it.
Speaker 1: But when I was living there, I mean, I thought
Speaker 1: it was one of the great historical misses that had
Speaker 1: ever taken place in that particular world. Yeah.
Speaker 3: And I think.
Speaker 2: We've talked about how if you look at the public
Speaker 2: lands as they exist now, it's almost like this perfect system.
Speaker 2: It's hard not to celebrate it. But it is controversial,
Speaker 2: and it has always been controversial. Yeah, And it's a
Speaker 2: product of power struggle between competing interests, and so I think,
Speaker 2: you know, that's another aspect of the story that you
Speaker 2: touch on at points, and I think the Texas case
Speaker 2: brings it up again. It's like Roosevelt had his critics,
Speaker 2: just as today we have the Mike Leaves of the
Speaker 2: world and those who don't see value in the public lands.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I.
Speaker 3: Wonder if you can speak to how conflict has shaped
Speaker 3: this story.
Speaker 1: Well, from the very beginning, as you mentioned Randal, public
Speaker 1: lands were controversial. I mean, conservatives in the time of
Speaker 1: Teddy Roosevelt called the creation of new national forests pink
Speaker 1: tea socialism, and their idea was you had and I
Speaker 1: think Texas actually when George Bush was President of the
Speaker 1: United States, Texas and George Bush used this term, we
Speaker 1: believe in an ownership society, and that, of course, this
Speaker 1: kind of the ultimate capitalist's idea is everything is owned
Speaker 1: by individuals, and the idea of a kind of a
Speaker 1: communal shared resource is foreign to that particular ideology. So
Speaker 1: from the very beginning, there was a constituency of people
Speaker 1: who thought creating public lands for the public to have
Speaker 1: access to this is just not right. So there's been
Speaker 1: a battle over that for a very long time. I
Speaker 1: mean this so called sage brush rebellions. I didn't talk
Speaker 1: about that in this particular episode, but from the nineteen
Speaker 1: twenties through the nineteen fifties, and in fact even as
Speaker 1: late as the nineteen eighties, we have had these kind
Speaker 1: of many revolts on the part of some people in
Speaker 1: the West who want the public lands, as they often say,
Speaker 1: returned to the states. And of course, the problem with that,
Speaker 1: for one thing, is in the language, the public lands
Speaker 1: never belonged to the states to start with. The states
Speaker 1: were created out of those lands. But so those lands
Speaker 1: had always been federal from the beginning. But there's always
Speaker 1: been controversy around it. And of course, in the instance
Speaker 1: here in the last six or eight months, as I
Speaker 1: describe at the end of this episode, and in the
Speaker 1: Big Beautiful Bill of last spring, Mike Lee of Utah
Speaker 1: wanted to start disassembling the public lands in states like Utah.
Speaker 1: And I mean I live in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Speaker 1: Now we have something like thirty three million acres of
Speaker 1: public lands in New Mexico. Mike Lee's plan wanted to
Speaker 1: privatize fourteen million acres of that like forty percent of
Speaker 1: the public lands in New Mexico. And so one of
Speaker 1: the things that I mentioned at the end of this
Speaker 1: particular script and certainly provided some images of as well
Speaker 1: as when the Western governors met in Santa Fe in June,
Speaker 1: I mean, there was a gigantic street protest on behalf
Speaker 1: of saving the public lands and retaining them, of which
Speaker 1: my wife Sarah and I were certainly in the midst
Speaker 1: of which lasted literally all day long and drowned out
Speaker 1: the governor's conference. In fact, they had to call off
Speaker 1: most of the afternoon because they couldn't hear inside the
Speaker 1: hotel where they were. But that particular protest, and it's
Speaker 1: one of the things that struck me about it looking
Speaker 1: at the signs, looking at the people, it had no
Speaker 1: political kind of definition. There were people from the left,
Speaker 1: there were people from the right. There were signs that
Speaker 1: said tree huggers and rednecks. Unite everybody from every side
Speaker 1: because we have grown up with the public lands and
Speaker 1: we know what it's like to have this wonderful access
Speaker 1: to the world. Everybody from every side who lives in
Speaker 1: the West did not want the public lands dissolved.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that's I mean, I think that gets to
Speaker 2: another point you made. It's that they're not some abs
Speaker 2: tracked thing. It's part of daily life.
Speaker 1: Absolutely.
Speaker 2: It's like everybody wants, you know, cheaper food, and everybody
Speaker 2: wants bamba clans.
Speaker 3: You don't they're not.
Speaker 2: You might disagree on how to get there, or how
Speaker 2: they should be managed or what what, you know, whatever
Speaker 2: the disagreement might be.
Speaker 3: But in the West, it's just it's part of life.
Speaker 1: It's part of life and uh and we love it
Speaker 1: and uh, as I said, if you grow up somewhere
Speaker 1: else and you come to the West and realize what
Speaker 1: kind of access you have to the world, it's like
Speaker 1: you've died and gone to heaven.
Speaker 3: Well, couldn't end it at a better spot than that.