The National Parks
By the time the park idea turned 50 years old, a dozen national parks had been created. While the departments of War, Interior, and Agriculture each claimed responsibility for the parks, the truth was that no one was in charge. Many of the nation's most spectacular landscapes remained unprotected and vulnerable. The building of a dam in Yosemite's Hetch Hetchy Valley stood as a terrible testimony to this fact. -PBS |
Buffalo Soldiers, like their white counterparts in U.S. Army regiments, were among the first park rangers, in general, and backcountry rangers, in particular, patrolling parts of the West. African-American army regiments, formed just after the Civil War, had been dispatched westward where these black soldiers fought in the Indian Wars and were eventually given the name Buffalo Soldiers by the Cheyenne and other Plains Indians who saw a resemblance between their dark, curly hair and the matted cushion between the horns of the buffalo. Approximately 500 Buffalo Soldiers served in Yosemite National Park and nearby Sequoia National Park with duties from evicting poachers and timber thieves to extinguishing forest fires. Their noteworthy accomplishments were made despite the added burden of racism. ~NPS
"It was a mammoth task for the army to patrol the park's 2 million acres on horseback. While they did their best to stop poachers and vandals, the soldiers had no recourse to punish offenders. No laws had been defined and so the wrongdoers were only issued warnings or, in severe cases, expelled from the park." |
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"The great wilds of our country, once held to be boundless and inexhaustible are being rapidly invaded and everything destructible in them is being destroyed. Every landscape, low and high, seems doomed to be trampled and harried. The wedges of development are being driven hard and none of the obstacles or defenses of nature can long withstand the onset of this immeasurable industry" -John Muir |
Stephen Mather Hired to Manage the National Parks (Ken Burns)
John Muir - John of the Mountains
Lee Stetson does live portrayals of John Muir around the world