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Will the Circle Be Unbroken?: Tourism and the National Park System in the Twenty-First-Century West
- University of New Mexico Press
- Chapter
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P icture this. Sunrise breaks over the corrugated majesty of northern Arizona’s Grand Canyon,casting its thin vale of amber light across the vast chasm until the canyon’s walls radiate with the brilliance of vermilion red.The silence of early dawn,normally punctuated by the chatter of restless birds and the cautious steps of an occasional deer or rabbit, is suddenly disrupted by the unmistakable clatter of motorized vehicles.The morning of November , , was not a typical day at Grand Canyon National Park.As park service officials and their staff prepared to execute the first ever federally mandated public closure of the popular natural wonder,Arizona’s governor,Fife Symington,accompanied by a thirteen -vehicle convoy of National Guardsmen,arrived at the park’s south entrance. Somewhat startled but not intimidated, park superintendent Rob Arnberger greeted the governor, saying,“Would you like to visit the park?”“I’m not here to visit,” Symington replied curtly,“I’m here to take over.” What prompted this modern-day, mechanized reenactment of the notorious gunfight at the O.K. Corral? First, the park service only months before had survived a congressionally led attempt to reduce the national park system from its then units to a mere fifty-two of the so-called jewels of the system.Second and more important, with the beginning of the new fiscal year the agency faced imminent financial disaster. In November , a Republican-dominated Congress, mindful of its party’s pledge to balance the national budget through closer scrutiny of annual federal expenditures, delayed passage of appropriations legislation for fiscal year .The budgetary crisis occurred just as the National Park Service (NPS) reeled from a comprehensive internal reorganization that had begun in , one aimed at reducing the size of the agency by , employees in two years.Thus the congressional impasse appeared to hit the NPS hardest among all of the five federal land-management agencies. In the wake of the impending financial and administrative catastrophe, Director Roger Kennedy ordered the temporary closure of all the national parks. The unprecedented Will the Circle Be Unbroken?: Tourism and the National Park System in the Twenty-First-Century West Arthur R. Gómez systemwide shutdown on the eve of the Christmas holiday season touched off the armed showdown between the state of Arizona and the NPS. The near constitutional crisis at the entrance to the Grand Canyon dramatically underscored the importance of federally managed lands—in this case the national parks—to the regional economies of theWest. Despite what some critics labeled “theatrics” on the part of Governor Symington and Superintendent Arnberger,the incident clearly demonstrated the extremes to which state officials were prepared to go in order to voice their indignation over the federal government ’s decision to make public lands inaccessible.Not since ,when President John F. Kennedy threatened to federalize the National Guard in reaction to Governor Ross Barnett’s refusal to admit James Meredith to the University of Mississippi,had a state executive so blatantly challenged the authority of the federal government.Fortunately,tensions subsided without serious consequences,and the Arizona Guardsmen withdrew to Phoenix. Soon thereafter, a spokesperson for the governor admitted that the state was trying only to make the park service “take them seriously with a show of force.” Symington’s antics,however,were not appreciated. Mindful of the tragedy that had befallen federal employees in Oklahoma City just months earlier,the NPS could ill afford complacency in the face of the state’s challenge to federal authority. In many respects, the incident at Grand Canyon was the direct consequence of the constant pressure brought to bear upon the natural and cultural amenities of theWest.Growing tourist visitations to federal,state,and municipal attractions, especially during the past decade, has made the notion of their closure for any reason unacceptable to the tax-paying public. In an earlier work, Quest for the Golden Circle (), I extolled the virtues of scenic, heritage, and recreational tourism, which had forged the economic profile of the Four Corners Region during the previous three decades. I enthusiastically predicted that tourism, the universally accepted panacea for regional economic revival,“ensured a healthy economic prognosis for all of the [Four Corners] municipalities.” If population growth at the expense of economic diversification,development at the cost of an increasingly diminished western land base, and recreation that exacts a heavy toll on environmental quality are the prerequisites for regional economic stability,then my optimism for the future of the Four Corners...