 There are places promised to the future, special places where our heritage and our hopes are preserved for posterity, national parks, and American legacy. When white men first explored this great land, America's riches seemed endless. Forests, plains, rivers and mountains stretched as far as the eye could see. For the most, the vast wilderness was a frontier to subdue and conquer in the name of progress and manifest destiny. Nature's bounty would be required to meet the needs of the growing nation, but by the late 1800s, over half of the hardwood forests and almost all of the wild prairies were gone. Sensitive men and women anguished at the loss. And painters realized that America's scenic treasures were not infinite or inexhaustible. Catlin, Emerson, Thoreau, and Muir looked beyond nature's raw resources and saw beauty and virtue. They were among the first to suggest parks and preservation. They spoke in defense of disappearing wildness. In wildness is the preservation of the world. Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and places to pray in, where nature's peace will heal and cheer body and soul alike. As spectacular natural areas in the American West were discovered and publicized, the idea of preserving unique places for people and posterity began to take hold. The National Park idea emerged in 1864 when the federal government passed legislation to transfer the pristine Yosemite Valley and nearby Mariposa big tree grove to the state of California so they might be used and preserved for the benefit of mankind. Held for public use, resort, and recreation, inalienable for all time. Elsewhere, the remote wonders of the Montana and Wyoming territories remained little known until the late 1860s. Successive expeditions traveled deep into the unknown. When these adventurers returned to civilization, they publicized their remarkable scenic and geological discoveries and suggested setting these wonders aside. Powerful interests gathered to sponsor Yellowstone as a national park. The Northern Pacific Railroad saw Yellowstone as a potential tourist mecca. Preservationists, long dismayed by the commercial ruin of Niagara Falls, strongly supported the bill. In 1872, Congress established the world's first national park, setting aside over one million acres as a public park and pleasuring ground for the benefit and enjoyment of the people. Congress followed Yellowstone with other large national parks during the 1890s and early 1900s. Sequoia, Yosemite, Mount Rainier, Crater Lake, and Glacier. Western railroads lobbied hard for these early parks and built grand rustic hotels to boost their passenger business. National parks fostered a new land-use dilemma. Could we both preserve and enjoy a place without destroying it? Initially, the answer was no. Poachers slaughtered wildlife. Souvenir seekers senselessly damaged nature's treasures. Roads and tracks, squatters, and developers scarred the landscape. Army engineers and cavalrymen developed park roads and buildings. Soldiers enforced regulations against hunting, grazing, timber cutting, and vandalism. They did what they could to serve the visiting public. They owned the vestiges of America's past beckoned for preservation. In 1906, Congress passed the Antiquities Act, authorizing presidents to set aside landmarks and other places of historic or scientific interest as national monuments. Theodore Roosevelt, long and advocate of the great outdoors and conservation, gave the village of the act to proclaim 18 national monuments. But these gestating parks were unable to protect themselves. Without manpower or a unifying organization capable of enforcing new conservation approaches, parks were vulnerable to competing interests and impacts. The conservationists of the Utilitarian School advocated regulated use of natural resources, such as damning rivers and mining in national parks. They soon clashed with strict preservationists. When San Francisco sought to dam picturesque Hetch Hetchy Valley in Yosemite National Park, John Muir cried out in opposition, Damn Hetch Hetchy? You might as well dam the people's cathedrals and churches. Yet after years of debate and struggle, gilded by presidential tours, the sanctity of national parks lost out to the forces of profit and progress. In 1913, Congress approved what some have called the worst disaster to befall a national park. The rape of Hetch Hetchy, as the preservationists termed it, underscored the need for an organization to manage and protect national parks. Stephen T. Mather, a wealthy Chicago businessman, vigorous outdoorsman, and a born promoter complained to Secretary of the Interior Franklin K. Lane about the way the parks were administered. Lane, in turn, challenged Mather to come to Washington and lead the cause. Mather eagerly accepted the opportunity to protect America's national parks from apathy and compromise. 25-year-old Horace M. Albright became Mather's top aide. These two men convinced powerful and influential people throughout the country to join their crusade for a national park's bureau. In the summer of 1915, they conducted the first of several elaborate trips through national parks. Prominent publishers, editors, and writers from major national magazines and newspapers, congressmen, scientists, and business leaders were escorted into the back country to witness the wilderness firsthand. As Mather and Albright had hoped, the marvels of the parks and the necessities of preservation were trumpeted throughout the media. Gilbert Grovner of the National Geographic Society devoted the entire April 1916 issue to the parks. Congress also responded, and President Woodrow Wilson signed the long-awaited law creating the National Park Service on August 25, 1916. The service was directed to conserve the scenery and the natural and historic objects and the wildlife, and to provide for the enjoyment of the same, unimpaired for future generations. This would prove to be an uniquely American idea. A new challenge, a step towards a democratic park idea, preserve our finest natural areas and cultural sites in the name of generations yet unborn. Mather was appointed the first director of the National Park Service, and Albright became assistant director. Pragmatic Mather spoke of a new era for national parks. Their inevitable destiny is to become an asset economically, as well as an incomparable source of pleasure, education, and spiritual uplift. Unfortunately, Mather was soon after hospitalized for one of several bouts of depression he suffered over the years, leaving the youthful Albright to organize the bureau, obtain its initial appropriations, and prepare its first park policies. Mather and Albright were convinced that more visitors must be attracted and accommodated if the parks and the park service were to succeed. Over the years, the determination to sell the National Park idea led to policies that seemed to neglect the resources, but they did attract many new visitors. Bears were fed garbage as entertainment. Predators, the wolf, mountain lion, and coyote were killed, and visitors might see popular animals such as deer and elk. Fires were suppressed, even when ignited naturally. Mountain streams and lakes were stocked with exotic German brown trout to provide enjoyment for fishermen. No one at the time anticipated the negative consequences of these measures. It would be another 30 years before nature's web of life was understood. Words like biosphere and ecosystem were not even invented yet. Only recently have we learned of the precarious balance of nature and the interrelatedness of all forms of life. Through the 1920s, the National Park system was concentrated in the west. When Horace Albright became the second director in 1929, he realized that parks must also serve eastern population centers. The service's next thrust would be preserving historic sites and memorials. The Government Reorganization Act of 1933 and a subsequent executive order signed by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt brought War Department battlefields and memorials into the system. Out west, the long sought Grand Teton Range was enfolded under National Park Service protection. The two biggest things that I wanted to do was to get the Grand Teton National Park, which I had gotten in the last days of the Coolidge administration, February 26, 1929. And now I've gotten all the historical areas. Of course, we've got things like the Statue of Liberty and the both places. We've got historic sites all over. Today, almost two-thirds of America's parks focus on the history and prehistory of the nation. Even when the nation was strangled by the Great Depression, the National Park idea flourished. New parks and facilities were added to the developing system. In 1933, the chief concern of the American government was to break the back of a bad depression. Among the conditions to be remedied were two President Roosevelt recognized at once. Employment for hundreds of thousands of young men and war veterans was imperative, and the organization and work of the Civilian Conservation Corps was undertaken. And in two years, through this unique plan, both problems were well on their way toward solution as great aid to economic recovery. The saving of natural resources was conservation pure and simple. To be here at these Virginia CCC camps, I wish I could see them all over the country. I hope that all over the country they're in this fine condition of the camps that I've seen today. I wish that I could take a couple of months off from the White House and come down here and live with them because I know I'd get full of health the way they have. For the National Parks, these relief programs meant the construction of new roads, trails, bridges and buildings. With these efforts came a renewed pride in preserving and protecting America's treasures. By the end of the 30s, the number of parks and monuments had grown to 178, but the expansion suddenly stopped in the face of World War II. The country went to war and so did the people of the National Park Service. Now which was thus forced upon us came a great miracle of industrial production. Tanks and guns and planes and ships and other fighting tools for our fighting men. More tools for war than any other nation had ever produced in so short a time. As war approached, most parks were closed. During this national emergency, great pressures mounted to mine minerals and cut timber within park boundaries. But the National Park idea had crystallized. While some grazing was allowed inside national parks, preservationists generally prevailed. As the war wore on, some parks were used by the armed forces for training, rest and recreation. Peace brought prosperity, the baby boom and the automobile. Suddenly, millions of Americans looked to parks for recreation. But years of neglect had been hard on park roads and facilities. Their dilapidated condition demanded attention. National Park Service Director Conrad Worth personally proposed to President Eisenhower a novel, ambitious plan, Mission 66. It concentrated on modernizing roads, bridges, trails, visitor centers and employee housing by 1966, the 50th anniversary of the National Park Service. New road construction and development within national parks to accommodate increasing visitation raised again the dilemma of balancing public use and resource preservation. More leisure time and Americans' increasing appetite for greater variety led to new kinds of recreational parks. National seashores, lakeshores and trails were born. Recreational areas were established. Glen Canyon, Huracanti and Whiskeytown impoundments offered swimming, fishing, hunting and boating. If we don't expand our park systems, state and federal and national, if we don't define wilderness and wild rivers and set up a system to protect them, we're going to find ourselves overusing them and abusing them to the extent that the very values we seek to protect are lost. During the 60s, new ideas and new needs stimulated Park Service Director George Hartzog and Congress to expand the system by broadening the concept of national parks. Major urban parks were established in New York and San Francisco, offering access to tens of millions of people who had never even heard of national parks. Scenic rivers, wild rivers, national trails and parks for the performing arts all joined the system to meet the needs of a diverse America. The social upheavals of the 60s were reflected within our national parks and increasingly self-indulgent society confronted parks with new kinds of problems and yet instilled a new awareness of the environment. The Park Service responded with environmental education programs fostered by Director Hartzog. Throughout the 60s and 70s, Congress strengthened the protection of park resources through a host of new federal laws. The National Environmental Policy Act required public participation in issues related to preservation and use. It's to take and make abstraction of the building's form. More than ever before, park management would seek public input in managing public lands and park resources. The bicentennial of our nation's beginning sensitized Americans by celebrating the values and ideas that formed the cornerstone of our history and heritage. In the late 70s, the spectrum of parks continued to broaden. New parks reflected a new consciousness of who we are. Lowell, Women's Rights, Martin Luther King. I'd like to welcome you to the home where Dr. King was born. One of the favorite rooms of Martin Luther King, Jr., was probably the kitchen area. So his favorite food, I asked his sister Christine, was fried chicken and collard greens and black eyed peas and his favorite dessert was apple pie and ice cream. A growing fear of a vanishing natural world prompted the transfer of huge land areas in Alaska to the National Park Service. Wilderness parks and preserves of great ecological scale and value. These new Alaskan parks more than doubled the acreage of the system. These remote, pristine lands are the last unspoiled remnants of America's wilderness dowry and serve as an ecological legacy for those who follow. In today's consumptive world, even Alaska's isolated vastness is no protection against the planet's growing environmental ills. National parks now must serve as living barometers of the health and faith of Mother Earth. All three were Isoides, three were Nitellar. New science and new explorers search for the mysteries of nature's global interconnectedness. Within these special places, scientists now monitor nature's changing pulse and measure our declining ecological legacy. Baseline data and computer modeling help identify new challenges in preserving the National Park idea. An ironic conclusion for what some have called America's greatest gift to the world. National Parks. The National Park Service is seeking people to transform the National Park idea into a global ethic. The strength of National Parks are in the people who run them. They must reflect America's cultural and ethnic diversity, come armed with sophisticated skills and be prepared for challenges. They require meaningful compensation and advancement, safe and affordable housing, and the tools and training needed to continue the service's mandate. Today's National Park system is both more and less than it might be. But its future demands the best America has to offer. Each of us can draw from the inspiration of early poets and artists. We discover the pioneering enthusiasm of Mather and Albright and continue the educational outreach of George Hartzach. Our mentors for the National Park idea. Those that join the National Park Service tradition can draw on the strength of those who came before as they promote the preservation aspirations of all Americans. To preserve our precious history and heritage, we must be devoted to the past. Vigilant in the present and optimistic about the future. Do not let the service become just another government bureau. Keep it youthful, vigorous, clean and strong.