America’s national parks are a soft power icon under threat from the White House
A wide-brim hat, forest-green pants and a short-sleeved khaki shirt with an arm patch featuring a bison and a sequoia tree. This ensemble is instantly recognisable around the US as the uniform of a National Park Service (NPS) ranger. High summer is their busy season – last year the national park system saw a record 331.9 million visits. Why tinker with something that unites Americans of all political stripes? Nevertheless, in keeping with its record so far, the current administration is looking to upset the apple cart.
In the name of cost savings, bean counters at the Department of the Interior are wondering whether states can oversee hundreds of lesser-known sites. Can Kentucky sweep the porch at Abraham Lincoln Birthplace National Historical Park and California sound the foghorns at Golden Gate National Recreation Area? The Trump administration signalled that the NPS will retain crown jewels such as Mount Rainier, Glacier and Zion – essentially, those with “National Park” in the name. The optics of a closed visitor centre overlooking the Grand Canyon or a shuttered ranger station in the shadows of mountainous Grand Teton were ruled an unthinkable embarrassment.
While superficially not a boneheaded idea, there are two problems with this proposal. The first is a corrosion of national identity at a time of deep political division. Red-state Americans should feel as entitled to traipse down Boston’s Freedom Trail as blue-state Americans are to imagine the shots that started the Civil War at Fort Sumter in south Carolina. If their respective states managed these historic sites, some of their heft as vignettes in the country’s story would be lost.
The park service was hailed by documentary filmmaker Ken Burns as “America’s best idea,” long acting as a soft-power arm of the US government, internally and abroad. Visitors from around the world flock to natural wonders, including Yosemite and Yellowstone, while the service has sent staff on multiyear international missions to advise on park planning over its century-long history.
The second issue, and more disconcerting aspect, is the uncomfortable heritage that will fade without imprimatur of the government. Last summer I visited the Minidoka National Historic Site in southern Idaho, a barren, windswept desert where thousands of Japanese citizens and US citizens of Japanese descent were incarcerated during the Second World War. My tour was led by the great-granddaughter of those who were imprisoned, and she narrated the concentration camp’s history with aplomb – all while wearing NPS insignia. It was a powerful testament to a mature country; one willing to invest its resources in memorialising shameful chapters. As the ranger explained on the tour of threadbare barracks, Idaho’s then-governor was none too keen on hosting Japanese wartime prisoners – and, given the state’s political complexion today, it’s hard to imagine that Boise legislators would spend a dime on upkeep.
Throughout the summer, the parsimonious tenants of the Department of the Interior are requiring the NPS to post signage asking for public feedback on anything that visitors feel portrays US history in a damaging light. It will lead to a long winter of whittling away nuance and complexity in the extraordinary and checkered heritage of my country. Come next summer, I fear, national parks will be a tarnished shrine to American greatness.
Scruggs is Monocle’s Seattle correspondent. For more opinion, analysis and insight, subscribe to Monocle today.
