In wilderness is the preservation of the world. ~ Henry David Thoreau
‘Tis the season. Enjoying
open-air parks provides healthful benefits during these pandemic and any other
times. This year, after spending much of 2020 sequestered inside, evermore
people have decided that enjoying outdoor parks is required, including us. On a
regular basis, we go hiking in Tilden Regional Park that beckons several blocks
from our home. Tilden is part of the impressive East Bay Regional Park
District, which comprises almost 125,000 acres of woodland and trails on the
eastern side of the San Francisco Bay. It is the largest urban regional park
district in the US.
Humans have been hiking for as
long as we’ve been hunting and gathering, which probably started two million
years ago. Otzi, the ancient “ice-man,” died while hiking high in the
Austro-Italian Alps about 5300 years ago, 5260 years before the fleece jacket was
first worn by alpinists. He must have been quite chilly.
More recently, in 1336 the poet
Petrarch recounted that he and his brother hiked and climbed for pleasure to
the top of Mt. Ventoux, a 6,200ft mountain in southern France. Millions of
people have walked on pilgrimages throughout many centuries in pursuit of moral
and/or spiritual quests.
The interest in taking a walk through
the countryside for its own sake perhaps became more earnest during the 18th
century, possibly associated with the rise of Romanticism which elevated the
importance of nature.
When cities significantly grew in
the during the late 18th century – early-19th century Industrial Revolution, devastating
yellow fever, cholera and diphtheria epidemics closely followed. The miasma
theory of disease remained prominent and promulgated that diseases were caused
by miasma, a toxic form of "bad air.”
Thus, a popular movement became
dedicated to increasing “good air” spaces that could provide better public health
and refuge from crowded city surroundings. Park-building was a reasoned
response to these terrible diseases. Frederick Law Olmsted, whose first child
died of cholera, was a significant proponent of such green spaces. In addition
to being a landscape architect, he was a public health official. In 1858,
Olmsted designed Central Park in New York City, as well as over 100 other
public parks across the US.
Folks who want to a walk through
the countryside in the 21st century assume tacitly that their journey usually will
be on public land, like Tilden Park. But what is a “park”? It can be many
things.
There are 22,493 public city
parks in the US, according to most recent information. They provide an
impressive array of facilities, including golf courses, dog parks, baseball
diamonds, basketball hoops and playgrounds for local residents. Chugach Park, mostly within
Anchorage, is the US’s largest city park, covering more than 464,000 acres.
America’s oldest public city park
is the Boston Common. Founders of the Massachusetts Bay Colony city bought 50
acres of land from William Blaxton in 1634, allowing families to use it principally
as a cow pasture. As folks kept putting additional cows on the common it became
overgrazed – a prototypical example of the tragedy of the commons – Colony
leaders limited the number of cows to 70 at a time.
Not only cows were using the Common;
Ann Hibbins was executed for witchcraft in 1658. Mary Dyer was one of four
Quakers hanged in 1660 for defying a law that banned Quakers from the Colony. Genuine
park status for the Boston Common arose in 1830, when grazing cows were officially
banned and two-legged beings were finally ascendant.
I grew up in Philadelphia, which
is home to one of the largest urban parks in the nation. Fairmount Park was
developed in 1855 to protect the city’s public water supply and preserve beneficial
green spaces within its rapidly-growing industrialization. Fairmount Park is
now associated with other Philadelphia parks, including Wissahickon Valley Park.
I enjoyed lots of youthful explorations in this park, many with Skeeter, my
best buddy. Perhaps the most memorable adventure was the time we found a
battered, chrome-plated, one-armed slot-machine of unknown origin lying next to
Wissahickon Creek. No, it wasn’t showing 3 aces.
Let’s move up a geographic level
and consider state parks. There are over 6,600 public state parks in the US,
covering 14 million (M) acres. The oldest state park is claimed by Niagara
Falls State Park in NY, established in 1885. However, Georgia’s Indian Springs
State Park has been operated since 1825, but did not gain official “state park”
status until 1931. Also, in 1864 the federal government ceded Yosemite Valley
and Mariposa Grove to be a California state park, which lasted for 26 years.
The largest state park in the US is Adirondack Park, founded in 1892. Its 6M
acres in northeastern NY include substantial privately-owned inholdings.
The first federal
park was created by Congress in 1872 with the Yellowstone National Park Act.
Since then, 19 different flavors of federal parks have been created by the
National Park Service (NPS), which is part of the Interior Department. Given
that the NPS just celebrated its 105th birthday and that there are now 423
federal parks of all types, it’s not that surprising there are so many types. The
NPS oversees 84 million acres of land plus over 4 million acres of oceans,
lakes and reservoirs. Unlike all the other park types, only Congress can
designate a National Park.
These different
types of parks include: 63 National Parks, the crown jewel of federal parkdom; 84
National Monuments that are managed by not only by the NPS, but also by the
Fish and Wildlife Service (part of the Dept. of Agriculture) and the Bureau of
Land Management (part of the Interior Dept.). Among other park types there are 19
National Preserves, 18 National Recreation Areas, including the Golden Gate
Recreation Area which was the second most-visited “park” in 2020, and 25
National Battlefields.
The largest US
national park is Alaska's Wrangell-St. Elias National Park & Preserve, at 13.2M
acres. The largest national park in the world is the Northeast Greenland
National Park (NP), created in 1974. This park covers a gigantic 240M acres,
which is 2.4x larger than all of California’s bountiful acreage.
We often
delight in the notion that the US “invented” the concept of national parks. Franklin
D. Roosevelt stated, “There is nothing so American as our national parks.” Although
true, it’s mistaken that Yellowstone was the world’s first national park. Nope,
94 years before Yellowstone became a national park, the local Mongolian
government of the Qing dynasty created Bogd Khan Uul National Park not far from
its capital, Ulaanbaatar. This Park is an impressively distant 9,320 miles from
Berkeley. The expanse to Bogd Khan Uul would not even be a medium jaunt plus a
few new turns for an Artic Tern, a bird that migrates an Olympian 44,000 miles
each year.
Spreading our
wings, we recently visited Kings Canyon-Sequoia National Parks in the Sierra Nevada
and had a fine time. Sequoia became our second national park in 1890, six days
before Yosemite. The picture below of me and our friend Katie shows us on top
of the Mark Twain sequoia tree stump in Sequoia NP. That was one huuuuge tree
before it was felled in 1891. Slabs of it were sent to the American Museum of
Natural History in New York City, the Smithsonian Natural History Museum in
Washington, DC and a museum in London to prove that giant sequoias actually existed
and weren’t just another “tall tale” from America’s wild west.
Before covid, in
2019 Yosemite had 2.4x as many visitors than Kings Canyon plus Sequoia. It
wasn’t always that way; in 1969 Yosemite had only 1.2x as many visitors. The
significant increase in Yosemite’s visitors during the past 50 years (93%) has
been a conscious NPS policy, requiring substantial investments in human and
physical infrastructure. Not all parks’ visitation has grown. Kings Canyon’s
1969 visitation was 1.5x bigger than in 2019. Nevertheless, smaller
parks like Kings Canyon and Sequoia that did not receive such added
infrastructure are doing fine.
Great Smoky
Mountains National Park has been the most-visited park every year since 1944,
with 12.1M visitors in 2020; there were 12.5M visitors in 2019. This summer
the NPS is dealing with large upsurges in national park attendance as more
folks seek gorgeous outside vistas, illustrated in this picture from Utah’s Arches
NP.
No matter what local,
state, national or international park you visit, for those who want to gain from
having a great time hiking, backpacking, swimming or camping outdoors, I wish
you many happy trails.
