Over the Horizon Line | Column By Hal Rothman

Want Political Backfire? Screw With the American Vacation

By Hal Rothman, 4-25-06

The current attempt by the Bush administration to cut the National Park Service operating budget by 20% is only the latest in a shameless series of efforts to gut the most beloved institution in American society. An administration that has taken pride in ignoring popular opinion now offers a gratuitous slashing that cuts at something Americans regard as a birthright. If you really want to piss off the public, mess with their vacations. "So what if the public's experience is affected?" these beltway divas are telling each other. "They won't be voting for us again."

Only six months ago, political hacks in the Department of the Interior tried to use administrative rules to shred nearly century-old protections of the nation's most cherished places. The public objected and they failed; now they are back, seeking to use a different kind of power to unravel some of the few remaining common bonds in our society.

I suspect that this too will backfire. National parks are one of the very few things Americans consistently point to as a visible symbol of their national identity. In their almost century and one-half of existence, the parks have been a crucial dimension of the glue that has bound Americans together as a nation.

Even more, the National Park Service, the agency charged with managing national park areas since its establishment in 1916, has consistently been rated the most loved federal agency by the American public. The keepers of the nation’s sacred landscapes and treasured historic places connect with a public that is starved for meaning in a shallow age.

Even in a changing America, national parks retain tremendous psychic power. Created to forge a vision of what was special about the American nation-and not incidentally, to illustrate the differences between American nature and European culture-they remain icons that bind us together. Especially when you stand amid the parade of tour buses at Mather Point at the Grand Canyon, watching the Japanese disembark en masse, or join the constant stream of people to Old Faithful, you know who you are.

That has been the gift of the national parks. It is not the nature and the history preserved within that defines us, although that nature is often stunning and the history moving. The idea of the national parks is even more important than what they contain.

Especially in the West, national parks have become cornerstones of state and regional economies. From Montana to New Mexico, California to Colorado, every state counts on the jobs national park visitation creates and the dollars it brings in. I would hate to try to balance my state budget in the interior West without that revenue.

Economic arguments aside, if there is a greater American contribution to the application of the principles of democracy, I can not imagine it. Before the eighteenth century, when people like you and I first got the individual rights we now take for granted, the idea of a public park didn't exist.

In Europe, everything belonged to somebody. Robert of Locksley, who we know as Robin Hood, happened along and saw the Sheriff of Nottingham and his men arresting a man who killed a deer to feed his family inside the King’s private reserve. The King’s lands and animals were private, hunted only if the monarch allowed. All of it belonged to the liege. Robert objected, stove in the head of one of the minions, and found himself an outlaw.

Not here. National parks define the difference between the United States, full of land and promise, and hidebound Europe, where centuries of privilege weighed heavy on the backs of all but the nobility. Never mind that for a long time, their democracy was more symbol than reality. Until after World War II, only affluent Americans could easily visit their parks.

Since then, the democratization of travel has made the national park experience available to the vast majority of Americans. Although minorities and immigrants are still under-represented among park visitors, the park system received more than 388 million visits last year. That's a lot of people.

So this summer, when you visit the national parks, be sure to let your congressional representatives know what you thought about the reduction in service that this administration arbitrarily caused. I'm sure they will want to hear from you, especially with elections this fall. If the institution of the national park is important, the public needs to come to its rescue.

Hal K. Rothman is Professor and Barrick Distinguished Scholar at the Department of History at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas. Considered the one of the nation’s leading expert on tourism, travel, and post-industrial economies, he is the award-winning author of countless books, including the widely acclaimed Neon Metropolis: How Las Vegas Started the 21st Century (2002), Devil’s Bargains: Tourism in the Twentieth Century American West, (1998 ), Saving the Planet: The American Response to the Environment in the Twentieth Century (2000), which received the 1999 Western Writers of America Spur Award for Contemporary Nonfiction, and many others.

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