Documentary

By Jeff Pfeiffer In last night’s fifth episode of The National Parks: America’s Best Idea on PBS, “Great Nature (1933-1945),” we see how the national parks are affected — and how they have an effect — as America enters the Great Depression and World War II. Under the guidance of a new president, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the parks thrive. Like his cousin Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin has a love for the outdoors. With Stephen Mather gone, his assistant Horace Albright is now director of the National Park Service. Albright has a unique goal: to transfer national military parks, battlefields and monuments […]

By Jeff Pfeiffer Last night’s fourth episode of The National Parks: America’s Best Idea was “Going Home (1920-1933).” The automobile is now an omnipresent feature in our national parks. How many families have packed up the old car and driven into these places over the decades? But as we see in this episode, the automobile was not welcomed by everyone in the early days. As we enter these years, talk begins about whether or not to allow the cars into the parks, an early example of our country’s ongoing love/hate relationship with the auto in relation to our environment. Many […]

By Jeff Pfeiffer The National Parks: America’s Best Idea continues tonight on PBS with the third episode, “The Empire of Grandeur (1915-19).” Though this episode chronicles only a short period of time, it is a very critical time in the history of the national parks. As the episode begins, the nation has a dozen national parks, but they are haphazardly organized, and under the supervision of different federal agencies. Before he passed, John Muir had suggested an overseeing body to manage the parks. After the failure to protect the Hetch Hetchy valley, conservation groups pick up on Muir’s idea and […]

By Jeff Pfeiffer Ken Burns’ wonderful miniseries The National Parks: America’s Best Idea continues on PBS tonight with episode two: “The Last Refuge (1890-1915).” John Muir, who figured so prominently in last night’s premiere episode, as he figured so prominently in America’s story of conservation, is back tonight. As the episode’s title implies, it focuses a lot on how, at the dawn of the 20th century, people began thinking differently about the parks and conservation in general thanks to people like Muir. This thought turns more toward how not only the land can be set aside, but also toward how […]