STUNNINGLY
DIVERSE
Birch trees near
Schooner Head on
the Park Loop Road;
the night sky over
Eagle Lake in Acadia.
The Declaration of Indepen- dence. The light bulb. Jazz. The Internet. The United States has delivered a lot of irsts. But famed documen- tarian Ken Burns wasn’t alking about any of those
inventions when he subtitled his 2009 12-hour
series “America’s Best Idea.”
His subject was the national parks.
Burns was paraphrasing writer Wallace Stegner,
who said they were “the best idea we ever had. Abso-
lutely American, absolutely democratic, they reflect
us at our best rather than our worst.”
On Aug. 25, 1916, President Woodrow Wilson
signed the bill that established the National Park
Service under the jurisdiction of the Department
of the Interior. The law brought together a dispa-
rate network that went back to the 19th century,
Many people are unaware that the United States
was the first nation to both protect its patrimony
and entrust swaths of it to the government. This
uncommonly ambitious project has not merely
endured for a century, it has thrived and is beloved
by Americans, who racked up 307 million visits
in 2015. One of those fans is singer-songwriter
Mary Lambert, one of the NPS’ five Centennial
Ambassadors.
“I grew up spending a lot of time camping and
hiking in the Olympic National Forest in Washington state,” she says. “That passion for the outdoors
has continued into adulthood.”
