PARKING REQUIRED

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.

Atop the Mark Twain tree stump in Sequoia NP.

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.

Arches NP, July 2021.

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.