The National Parks Struggle

The PBS program about the history of the National Parks system is interesting and the narration and the photographs are very appealing. There's one point that keeps coming up. Creating each monument or park was a stuggle and very often it was a close call whether the places would be destroyed before the government could protect the land. Another critical part of the process of setting aside these parks was that the Congress often failed to appropriate funds. Many times the land was purchased with the money of the rich, which was ironic since many of them made their money in the railroad, timber, oil and mining businesses.