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Preserving America’s Best Idea
A century ago, Stephen Mather embarked on a journey across America to make the case for a uni ed national park system BY JUSTIN FRANZ
n a crisp September day in 1915, U.S. District Attorney for Montana Burton K. Wheeler got his car stuck in the mud on a rutted road along the east side of Glacier National Park.
As Wheeler assessed the situation, he noticed a pair of Blackfeet horsemen dragging another vehicle through the muck. As they pulled alongside Wheeler, a man stepped out to lend a hand.
“My name is Stephen Mather,” the man said to Wheeler. “I’m assistant to the secretary of the interior and in charge of the park. Could I be of service?”
“Just the man I’d been waiting to nd,” Wheeler shot back, “the one who has the responsibility for this horri- ble mess passing itself o as a road.”
The mucky situation Assistant Secretary Mather and Wheeler, Montana’s future U.S. senator, found them- selves in that early fall day was not unusual in Ameri- ca’s national parks of the era. Although these massive pieces of land were set aside for the enjoyment of all Americans, citizens could rarely take advantage of the parks – and if they did, it wasn’t easy. Roads were rutted, accommodations lacking and information was limited.
To highlight the state of America’s national parks,
Mather set out on a yearlong journey to make the case to Congress for a department to oversee and maintain the country’s most treasured lands. The journey took Mather through Montana’s own Glacier National Park.
The idea to protect culturally and naturally signif- icant pieces of land was hatched 500 miles south and 45 years earlier around a camp re in what is today Yel- lowstone National Park. A Montana lawyer, Cornelius Hedges, was part of an expedition to explore that scenic corner of Montana and Wyoming. While sitting around a camp re in September 1870, Hedges suggested that rather than claim the land for their own pro t, the mem- bers of the expedition should encourage the government to set aside this special piece of geyser- lled land. Less than two years later, President Ulysses S. Grant signed legislation creating Yellowstone.
By the early 1900s, there was a half-dozen parks scat- tered across the West, including Sequoia, Yosemite and Mount Rainier. At the time, the parks were under the control of the Department of the Interior and patrolled by armed soldiers. The soldiers were a necessity in what a park service history called “the wild and woolly” West where a few years prior stagecoach robberies were still
common. In 1906, Congress approved the Antiquities Act that gave the president authority to create national parks and historic monuments. Within a few years, more parks were established, including Glacier in 1910.
As the number of preserves increased, the need for a “bureau of parks” was apparent, but despite broad sup- port – from President William Howard Taft to in u- ential railroad president Louis W. Hill – the idea lan- guished in Congress.
In 1914, Mather, a Chicago businessman who made millions in the Borax industry, wrote a letter to Sec- retary of the Interior Franklin Lane railing against the state of the national parks. Mather, who was also a climber and member of the Sierra Club, was enraged that the federal government was ignoring its duties to protect the parks. According to legend, Lane wrote back, “If you don’t like the way the national parks are run, why don’t you come down to Washington and run them yourself?” Mather took him up on the o er.
In January 1915, Lane hired Mather as his assistant secretary to make the case for a national park service. “Just get out in the country, size up the park prob-
lems, do a broad public relations job, so that you can
Stephen Mather, rst director of the National Park Service on horseback at Many Glacier in 1924.
T.J. HILEMAN PHOTO
COURTESY GLACIER NATIONAL PARK
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JUNE 1, 2016 // FLATHEADBEACON.COM