15 July 2008

About This Issue

A cyclist winds through Ohio’s Cuyahoga Valley National Park.

Through their system of national parks, the people of the United States own and protect mountains, deserts, forests, wetlands, tundra and tropical reefs.

All American citizens are, in a sense, stewards of sites where the Founding Fathers envisioned a new nation and where ancient peoples built cities. Americans are protectors of the tallest living things on Earth and of hundreds of rare species that enliven a subtropical wilderness.

The U.S. National Park Service (NPS) presides over a sprawling system of parks, seashores, trails, monuments and battlefields that encompasses 3.6 percent of the nation’s entire landmass. The land and its life forms are set apart, preserved, and spared from the asphalt, sprawl and neon that creep across the modern world. National parkland -- more than 34 million hectares -- is to remain “unimpaired for future generations,” according to the law that established the Park Service in 1916.

At the same time, the gates of the parks are open to all, and in more than 277 million visits last year, Americans and many foreign travelers entered one of the almost 400 national parks in search of recreation, relaxation and more. Americans families visit the parks to see and share the wonders of their land, to learn about the forces and the people who have shaped it through the centuries. The experience becomes part of their own family history, a shared memory about a day when together they learned more about their country and how it came to be.

Many Americans will leave their visit with the belief once described by former President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. “There is nothing so American as our national parks. The scenery and wildlife are native. The fundamental idea behind the parks is native. It is, in brief, that the country belongs to the people.”

This edition of eJournalUSA presents some glorious views of the national parks themselves and some of the history of how this vast system has expanded in both size and mission through the decades. NPS Director Mary A. Bomar and filmmakers Ken Burns and Dayton Duncan explain the national spirit and ethic that the parks have come to represent for Americans and for the world. Other articles explore how park officials from the United States and other nations have traded ideas, skills and techniques to better preserve and maintain the lands, the life and the culture that are the treasures of every nation’s legacy.

The Editors