These American Lands: Parks, Wilderness, and the Public Lands: Revised and Expanded Edition

Over 634 million acres of the United States -- nearly a million square miles -- are federally owned. "These American Lands" is both a history and a celebration of that inheritance. First published in 1986, the book was hailed by Wallace Stegner as "the only indispensable narrative history of the public lands." This completely revised and updated edition is an unsurpassed resource for everyone who cares about, visits, or works with public land in the United States. With over 75 pages of new material, the volume covers: national parks national forests national resource lands wildlife refuges designated wildernesses wild and scenic rivers Alaska landsnational trails Each chapter outlines the history of the unit of public lands under discussion, clarifies the resource use and policy conflicts that are currently besetting it, and provides a detailed agenda of management, expansion, and preservation goals.

This authoritative and stirring assessment of our public lands - the first book ever published to give the history and propose the future of each unit of a federal trust that today accounts for approximately one-third of America's landmass - begins with the establishment of Yellowstone National Park in 1872. The national park concept, which the historian Lord Bryce called the best idea to come out of the New World, was the first attempt by a national government to preserve land for future generations. Since then, hundreds of additional parks, monuments, historic sites, wilderness areas, and wildlife refuges have been added to a vast system of public lands that also includes national forest and Bureau of Land Management holdings. The preservation of our nation's natural heritage has become a model throughout the world, but the fight to keep public land unspoiled - from the Everglades to Alaskan mountain ranges - is never-ending, as this lively and dramatic history of America reveals. This preservationist idea did not come naturally: the myth of the land's superabundance dominated the thinking of Americans even after the frontier was officially closed one hundred years ago. Frontier greed and carelessness, combined with business and political pressures for local control, continue to threaten our parks, forests, and wilderness lands today. The battles over these lands, especially as their outcomes determine present and future patterns of land use, will continue to define our civilization. These American Lands assesses management policy within each unit and demonstrates why the citizen's vigilance is necessary today if future Americans are to look upon our natural legacy as the crowningachievement of the twentieth century.