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6. Park Service Diggers: Public Historians and the Problem of Status
- University of Massachusetts Press
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131 Chapter 6 Park Service Diggers Public Historians and the Problem of Status -ZThe speed maniac, the low-brow, and the moron are as yet an item in the travel to national parks, and will always remain so. Lifting this limited class to a higher realization of park ideals and values is comparable to Joe Cannon’s famous “boot strap aviation.” —Jesse Nusbaum— Park Service holdings,staff,and attendance had expanded exponentially by the end of the 1930s. In 1931 the average number of personnel employed by the Park Service each month was 2,044. In 1935 it was 17,047. During the same period, the number of park museums nearly doubled from twentyseven in 1933 to fifty-three in 1936. Similarly, the number of historic sites held by the National Park Service increased dramatically. By 1941, in addition to the fifty-seven battlefields and monuments transferred from the War Department, the Park Service operated thirty-five historic house museums—eight west of the Mississippi and twenty-seven east of the Mississippi.1 Attendance in the parks and monuments, which had grown steadily from the creation of the National Park Service,had declined during the start of the Great Depression. In 1930 total attendance was 3,246,656, but in 1933 the number was down to 1,872,000. The numbers rebounded during the New Deal, however, and 1936 saw 3,544,000 visitors enter the parks.2 The increase in visitation required better planning, and the Park Service implemented a number of visitor studies during the 1930s.Superintendents and rangers studied private campgrounds to evaluate automobile-friendly whom do we serve? 132 sites adjacent to national parks. They concluded that such operations were generally better run and less expensive than those inside park areas, and they used the results to set guidelines for better competition by park concession operators.3 A much larger two-phase study took place in 1939, as part of a cooperative effort between the National Park Service and the state parks. During the first stage, park visitors filled out a questionnaire, answering demographic questions about their income and residence, as well as their modes and distance of travel. A full 12,081 questionnaires were returned from 126 state and municipal parks as well as 9 federal recreation areas in twenty-seven states. In phase two, park rangers counted the number of cars coming through park entryways and made note of the relative number of in-state and out-of-state tags.Rangers also counted the number of people making use of particular facilities and activities. No qualitative questions were asked in either phase of the study.4 The survey goals were entirely pragmatic, and the Park Service used the information to determine the best location for parking lots, picnic tables, crowd-control barriers , exhibits, and interpretive signs. Public interest in the national parks had dramatically expanded, at least in part because of circumstances well beyond the agency’s control. In the years between the two world wars, economic and political conditions had made overseas travel less attractive. The U.S. Travel Bureau, established in 1937 with New Deal funding and staff, urged Americans to travel at home to help spark the economy.5 The improvement of national transportation infrastructure, the broader availability of automobiles, and development of an integrated system of publishing and advertising helped foster the rise of a tourism industry in the United States. One particularly successful campaign—See America First—helped brand National Parks as icons of a uniquely American experience and compelled citizens to visit them as part of their patriotic duty. At the same time, tourism lent consumers some power to shape America’s culture and heritage. New Deal documentary projects had enabled white-collar professionals—photographers, architects, historians, and writers—to transform local folkways into representations of quintessential Americana. Domestic tourism enabled average citizens to participate in that process. Their travel choices reflected their beliefs about which landscapes were the most meaningful representations of a shared American heritage. Tourists were consumers of America, and purchasing power gave them a measure of cultural authority.6 The expansion of tourism to the parks lent some urgency to the question [3.15.147.53] Project MUSE (2024-04-17 21:09 GMT) park service diggers 133 of how park personnel understood and performed their professional authority. Although the dramatic increase in tourism was an indicator of the success of the National Park Service,the large number of visitors might damage any given...