Our National Parks: America's Best Idea
Our National Parks: America's Best Idea Watching Ken Burn's documentary, "The National Parks: America's Best Idea". I expected it to be a travelogue, showing sights of our beautiful land. It is so much more. The history of our National Parks threads deeply and strikingly through all the major social and political issues our country has experienced since the late 1800's: war, exploration, racial prejudice, grazing rights, state's rights, the depression, the New Deal, executive branch versus legislative, beauty, Native Americans, Japanese internment, the arts, welfare... These issues didn't simply exist while National Parks and National Monuments were being established...the issues were central to the creation of parks, and the parks were central to the issues. In some cases, the parks changed social and political thought and work. Many of the same outcries we hear today accompanied the battles to establish our most dearly loved National Park...