Position Paper

In 1872, Congress designated more than 2.2 million acres in northwest Wyoming as the nation’s first National Park, starting a nationwide movement to preserve the shrinking and faltering natural beauty that the United States had striven to tame at all costs. It became apparent to Theodore Roosevelt that change was needed to preserve the nation’s natural wonders, and Yellowstone was and still is a prime example. As one of the nation’s most popular National Parks in the National Park Service, Yellowstone has fallen victim to its own success, which poses a problem to the NPS’s dual mandate “to conserve the scenery and the natural and historic objects and the wildlife therein and to provide for such enjoyment of the same in such a manner and by such means as will leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations” (Organic Act, 1916). This mandate of preserving yet providing for the enjoyment of future generations means that the NPS has to both protect the wilderness in the Park and make it accessible to visitors.

As of 2008 (most recent data possible), the NPS sees almost 450 million visitors a year, an increase of nearly 55% in the last thirty years. This general trending upwards peaked in 1998 and has remained relatively steady since then. Even though the number of annual visitors peaked in 1998, the average hours per visit has steadily decreased, down nearly 22% since 1976. This decrease in park visit length is troubling, as it implies that the National Park Service is not fulfilling its requirement to provide “unimpaired…enjoyment for future generations”. This can logically be concluded because external forces acting on the quantity of visitors does not affect the quality of each visit, measured by the length of stay.

Our team is debating that this decrease in average visitation stay is a direct result of the increase in visitors and the noticeable impact of hundreds of millions of people on the finite resources ‘protected’ in the park. From the data supplied directly by the National Park Service, it is clear that the number of visitors peaked in 1998, and has since remained relatively constant. The fact that the number of visitors has not risen significantly can only be attributed to the overcrowding of the parks. The National Parks become much less attractive when traffic congestion requires visitors to wait for hours to view Old Faithful geyser in Yellowstone, or El Capitan in Yosemite National Park. When these peak visitation times occur in the summer months, it become nearly impossible to obtain camping permits, trails become obscenely crowded and the general experience becomes like visiting a theme park – the opposite of the purpose of the National Park System to allow citizens the opportunity to connect with nature through solitude and feeling small in comparison to the majestic wonders and natural beauty housed in the parks. In effect, park visitation has reached maximum capacity in the more notable parks, and the number of visitors physically cannot increase.

These levels of visitors are also evident in the average stay per visit decline. In the mid 1980’s, the average visit to a NPS site lasted four hours, but the current levels has dropped below three hours per visit. This dramatic decrease has to be attributed to some change in the parks, the most notable of which is the peak levels of visitors. The NPS sites have simply become commonplace, as they have lost their core appeal to visitors due to the issue of overcrowding and the visible impact of the millions of visitors.

As a result of the millions of visitors annually, the National Park Service has catered to the needs of the visiting public, establishing amenities that would be typically found at an amusement parks instead of remote wilderness area. Lodges, hotels and thousands of miles of roads facilitate visitors as they access previously remote natural wonders, but at the same time they prevent the profound experiences that that the National Parks were created to preserve.

Profound experiences are critical to American culture and individual character development. Many of our nation’s greatest political, ideological and sociological leaders had defining moments in their lives in which they experienced the grandeur of nature in a NPS site, an experience that would forever change the direction of their life. We as a nation cannot continue to dilute the profound experiences by paving the parks and building creature comfort amenities. When we facilitate entertainment and recreation in the parks, we maintain part of the NPS mandate to ‘increase the enjoyment’, but we diminish a far greater need, a need than can be found in few other places – solitude.

This solitude or the feeling of being miniscule in comparison to the majesty of the natural beauty of the park cannot be recreated in a theme park or other man-made experience. Authentic experiences reconnect men with nature, and with the core essence of humanity, an intangible experience that often becomes outwardly evident in a restoration of the body inside and out.

Limiting the number of visitors to the parks, and increasing the levels of education of those who do visit the parks will slowly bring back the solitude that was once felt in the parks. Currently, the impact of the visitors on the parks is evident even when the visitors leave during off-peak months, as the damage of millions lingers much longer than the actual visitors. When the quantity of visitors decreases, and the level of respect for the wilderness areas increase, the ability for citizens to have a profound experience of solitude become much more likely. The experience of solitude is just as crucial to protect as the endangered species on the Endangered Species Act, but since it is not a tangible object, it is often overlooked and sacrificed in order to encourage more and more visitors to NPS sites.

There are no substitutes for the life altering experiences produced by solitude in the scenic settings of the National Parks, and this is a fundamental American right that needs to be preserved for generations to come.

NPS Visitor Trending Graphs

Welcome!

Welcome to our blog for Nature and American Values class at Virginia Tech. In our blog, we will be presenting an argument concerning the domestication of National Parks, and how visitors use Park resources. Over the course of the semester this site will be updated to reflect our position concerning the 'Endangered Experience' of witnessing our nations crown jewels housed in the National Park System as millions of visitors clamor each year for the same picturesque vista.