Once upon a time, there was a national park unit centered around fossilized plants. And there was another -- the country's second national park, actually -- that was located on an island in Lake Huron. But no more.
Almost 50 years ago, Congress decommissioned Fossil Cycad National Monument as a unit of the National Park Service, in large part because most of the fossils that had originally earned the monument its distinction had been pilfered from the area.
And then there was Mackinac National Park (later known as Mackinac Island National Park). It was established in 1875, just three years after Yellowstone National Park, in response to the popularity of the island as a summertime destination. Twenty years later, though, the federal government decommissioned the park and turned it over to the state of Michigan, which established it as its first state park.
Over the years, roughly two dozen national park units have either be decommissioned or turned over to another branch of government. For instance, Lewis and Clark Cavern National Monument was created by presidential proclamation on May 11, 1908, and then given to the state of Montana in August 1937. Papago Saguaro National Monument in Arizona was established by presidential proclamation in January 1914, and handed over to Arizona officials in 1930.
More recently, Oklahoma City National Memorial was deauthorized as a unit of the NPS on Jan 23, 2004 and turned over to the city. The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts was created by an act of Congress in 1972, and transferred to the Kennedy Center Trustees by Congress in 1994.
For a look at a list of former Park Service units, check out this site.
And then ask yourself, are there Park Service units today that should be handed off either because they not longer are fitting or could be better managed by a different agency? Could some of the national recreation areas -- Lake Mead, say, or perhaps Golden Gate or Gateway -- find a better fit with some other agency? How 'bout if Golden Gate is handed off to the city of San Francisco, that Glen Canyon National Recreation Area is swapped to the U.S. Bureau of Land Management for the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in southern Utah, or that Gateway be given to a joint New York-New Jersey commission?
Should the Park Service, in these tough budgetary times, take a serious look at its 391 properties and propose some changes? Former U.S. Rep. Jim Hansen, a Republican from Utah, once suggested that Great Basin National Park be decommissioned, saying once you've been there there's no need to return.
Fortunately, Mr. Hansen didn't get his way. With its ancient trees, intriguing caverns, and alpine high country in the middle of the Great Basin, Great Basin National Park is certainly a unique landscape that fits well with the Park Service's mission.
But can the same be said of all 391 units? Should there really be a "Thaddeus Kosciuszko National Memorial"?
Should the "National Park" Service be given responsibility solely for the 58 units that are called national parks? Should historical sites go to a "National History Service," and national battlefields be turned over to the Defense Department?
What do you think?
Comments
Eric, we owe you a vote of thanks for drawing attention to Alan Hogenauer’s article “Gone but Not Forgotten: The Delisted Units of the U.S. National Park System.” It provides an excellent history of sites that have been entirely removed from the national park inventory after having been established. A surprisingly large number of parks have been erased from the inventory for various reasons. There were 34 such delisted (“decommissioned”) park units in 1983 when Hogenauer wrote this article and some others have been delisted in the last 25 years. The concluding section of Hogenauer’s article emphasizes four main points: First, delistings are highly selective; there has been no wholesale pruning of manifestly worthy national parks. Second, there has been no geographic bias to the delistings. Third, delisted units almost never become inaccessible to the public; indeed, there has been only one such occurrence (Shoshone Caverns). Finally, and very importantly, no delisted unit that Hogenauer identified lost its integrity as a historic, natural, or recreational resource after being removed from National Park Service administration. Does this mean that national park delisting is such a great idea that we should have lots more of it going on? Certainly not! But Hogenauer’s findings do show that the occasional pruning of units is a normal, not necessarily harmful process in the National Park System. Additional delisting is surely going to occur. Instead of condemning delisting out of hand, perhaps we should be fine tuning the process. It’s especially important that we know which criteria are best suited to the task of identifying units whose continued existence as National Park System components least serves the national interest.
Who the heck is "Claire Burtons"? If you mean Clara Barton and somehow think that her life and story aren't worthy of a central place from which to tell it, you are sadly mistaken. Now Glen Echo Park -- that's certainly a big question mark...
A great topic! I think rather than starting with the question of what the National Park System shouldn't be, one should start with the quesiton of what the National Park System should be. A great definition I have heard is that the National Park Service should represent our Nation's greatest, natural, historical, and cultural treasures. With that being said, it is interesting to note that there are six Units in the National Park System that don't even carry the word "National" in their names, and which are very borderline significant. These are:
- Catoctin Mountain Park
- Fort Washington Park
- Greenbelt Park
- Piscataway Park
- Prince William Forest Park
- Rock Creek Park
This list also doesn't include Wolf Trap Farm Park, which recently received the designation of "National Park for the Performing Arts", even though it seems to simply be the summer outdoor music venue for the city of Washington, not much different than similar such venues all around the country. Of those seven, the best case for National Park status that you could probably make out of this list would be for Catoctin Mountain Park (which includes the lands surrounding the Presidential Retreat at Camp David), but the others seem very lacking in "Naitonal" significance.
The other interesting category would be those sites that are primarily recreational sites, centered around dam-based reservoirs. These sites include:
- Amistad NRA
- Bighorn Canyon NRA
- Big South Fork National River & Recreation Area
- Curecanti NRA
- Glen Canyon NRA
- Lake Mead NRA
- Lake Merdeith NRA
- Missouri National Recreational River
This list doesn't include a couple others like Gauley River NRA, Lake Chelan NRA, and Ross Lake NRA that are administered as part of other nearby Parks. Nevertheless, all of the above are certainly anamolous bits of the National Park System, since their resources are in fact the results of man-made dams. With that being said, many of them, including Bighorn Canyon, Curecanti, Glen Canyon, and Lake Mead, all have spectacular scenery, and Amistad actually protects an important paleo-art site. So, as Kurt's article suggested, even Units that seem somewhat questionable are often not completely without merit.
Sabattis
I think Ellen has a good point, and if she's the same Ellen I knew many years ago, I know she means what she writes. Get in touch with me Ellen, if you can. I love the national park system and go to Rocky Mountain National Park as often as I can.