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November 5, 2004
DEATH VALLEY DAYS Park celebrates 10th anniversary
By PHILLIP GOMEZ "From Desolation to Destination" documents the changing perspectives from which Death Valley has been viewed by the general public since before its proclamation as a national monument in 1933. Ten years ago, Congress authorized the status change to a national park, the most prestigious category of wildlands designation in the nation's system of monuments, seashores, historic sites, battlefields and other official labels of preservation designation. For millennia, Death Valley was the familiar homeland of Native Americans. It was in 1849 that a party of Argonauts crossing the valley gave the area its name in a parting tribute to its harsh environment that claimed one of its members: "Goodbye, Death Valley!" The gesture made from the bordering Sierra Nevada Range was probably just a passing remark, but somehow history remembered it, the name and an enlarged myth of the valley's horrors sticking in the popular imagination. When borax was discovered in 1881, industry came to Death Valley, with the famous 20-mule teams hauling out the ore. By 1926 the borax began to be less profitable, and the Pacific Coast Borax Co., thinking to diversify, opened a luxury resort called Furnace Creek, now park headquarters. A toll road from Los Angeles was built and tourism started in earnest. With the mines playing out, borax company officials saw the writing on the wall and, enlisting the aid of the fledgling National Park Service, lobbied hard for a national park. A park would bring needed tourists to Death Valley, giving the company a monopoly on the area's resort business. As had occurred at Yellowstone, Grand Canyon and other scenic wonderlands in the West, where the railroads had lobbied the government to get national parks set up next to their depot resorts, the borax company was eager to get into the tourist business. As author Richard E. Lingenfelter has described the enviable situation of the company in his monumental Death Valley & the Amargosa: Land of Illusion, "The commercial advantages were obvious. By making Death Valley one of the nation's official wonders, it would become a 'must' for millions of additional tourists. Moreover, the government would then help advertise it and maintain all those costly roads. And finally, since all lands within the park would be withdrawn from further settlement, the tourist bonanza could be kept in the hands of those already on the ground; no more newcomers could crowd in." Death Valley came of age during the great road-building boom of the 1920s when the new automobile was all the rage. In fact, F.M. "Borax" Smith never finished building his railroad through the Amargosa Valley to Tonopah. Smith lost the race to be the first to get to the Nevada gold fields. "Copper King" W. A. Clark, of Clark-county fame, beat Smith in a high-sweepstakes rail-laying competition in the early years of the 20th century. Nostalgia for the "Old West" came about after the first thoroughly mechanized world war inspired public interest in remote western deserts. Pacific Coast Borax sponsored "the old ranger" on a new radio show, beginning in 1930, called "Death Valley Days." The popular show, later on television and hosted by President Ronald Reagan, continued for more 40 years. Principally a ploy to bring national attention to the area for generating tourism, three years later it saw success when President Herbert Hoover declared Death Valley a national monument. National parks once were afforded, by virtue of their designation by Congress, greater resource protection, but today the name itself has acquired a patina of prestige from the public's recognition of national parks as highly vaunted tourist destinations, said current Superintendent J.T. Reynolds at a reception Saturday night. Reynolds' birthday coincidentally fell on the same day as the park's anniversary, and those in attendance sang him "Happy birthday," cutting two birthday cakes, one for him and one for the park. In attendance at Shoshone's community center were, in addition to Reynolds and various National Park Service staff, Howard Gross, representing the National Parks Conservation Association; two previous Death Valley superintendents; the directors of park "gateway" chambers of commerce in California and Nevada - Big Pine, Bishop, Death Valley Junction, Shoshone, Tecopa, Independence, Lone Pine, Amargosa, Beatty, and Pahrump - other dignitaries and local members of the public. "People tend to value national parks more than other (Park Service managed) areas," said Ed Rothfuss, superintendent from 1982 to 1994. Rothfuss did all he could to bring about the new designation, going out on a limb to order new signs for the park - and keeping them hidden away in his office - before Congress actually passed the legislation. Every previous superintendent, Rothfuss said, anticipated getting the national monument national park status, but mining interests always threw up political obstacles. Today, Death Valley National Park is 95-percent official "wilderness." Rothfuss recounted the heated public protests and final passage of the federal California Desert Lands Act, by one vote, as a precursor to Death Valley's name change and its expansion of 120 million acres. California's Joshua Tree National Monument at the south end of the Mojave Desert also became a national park at the same time, and Mojave National Preserve was also established southwest of Las Vegas in the California desert. The year after it became a park, Death Valley's recorded visitation topped one million for the first time. "Parks cannot survive without support from their communities and their friends," Rothfuss said, hinting at the real power base behind the park's resource preservation efforts. "Death Valley National Park: How great it sounds! With the phenomenal growth of Pahrump and Las Vegas, it's great to know we have set aside this land." Dick Martin, superintendent after Rothfuss, said with regard to water claim filings in areas surrounding the park, "They call us the National Protest Service. I'm proud of that." Martin said, however, the park was now "on the same page as Nye County managers." But he prefaced the statement saying, "We'll continue to fight the good fight." The Park Service's unique and paradoxical mandate "to preserve and protect" park resources for future generations, while at the same time endeavoring "to provide for the enjoyment of the same" by the present generation, will always present park managers with administrative challenges. But Martin said the balance of any responsible focus should be on future generations and their right to the same park enjoyment as those living today. "Let us not be so vain or greedy that we will not leave something for our own grand kids," said Martin. |
