DENNIS MYERS Against the Grain Advertisement

Politicians know how to publicize their accomplishments. Sometimes they promote achievements they never achieved and smother the mistakes they do make. Reporter Richard Reeves has written he has a bias against reporting the good things about politicians.

"I don't feel any great obligation to recount their many and varied personal and professional virtues," Reeves wrote in 1975. "That is what they, or the taxpayers, are paying for in the salaries and fees of press secretaries, media advisers, and advertising agencies. Believe me, there is nothing good about Jerry Ford, Nelson Rockefeller or any of the Kennedys that the American people have not been told..."

So naturally, the news releases of politicians are read by reporters with a certain built-in cynicism. And when one arrives bragging about a 23-year-old success, as one from U.S. Sen. Harry Reid did last week, it probably also inspired skepticism among a lot of Nevada reporters. But this time, the accomplishment merited the attention.

Reid's release was sent out to draw attention to upcoming events that will throw the spotlight on Nevada's magnificent Great Basin National Park. A quarter, commemorating the park will be issued (next year, according to Reid, in 2013, according to the U.S. Mint). And the park will be featured in Ken Burns' upcoming documentary series on the national parks.

When it was created in 1986 under a bill sponsored by U.S. Representative Harry Reid of Nevada, the park was a revelation to those who thought of Nevada as a big desert sandbox suitable only for missile sites and waste dumps.

"The Last Great Park" was the headline on Newsweek's report (a reference to the growing difficulty of creating these parks), accompanied by a gorgeous photograph. "Stalagmites And Stunning Vistas" was the way Time magazine put it.

There were those who pettily tried to deny Reid credit for his accomplishment. I can still remember the way the Reagan administration staged the ceremony dedicating the park in Baker, in August 1987.

It was held under a big tent and the principal speaker was Paul Laxalt, then a Republican senator from Nevada who had always been skeptical of the park, but went along with its creation.

Reid was buried deep in the program. Some reporters were taken in -- James Willworth's story in Time magazine did not mention Reid but did reference Laxalt.

But the people of Eastern Nevada were not deceived -- they knew Reid was responsible for the park at a time when they needed every possible source of income.

The Kennecott open pit mine at Ruth had closed, the company blaming environmental regulation but cheap overseas copper was the real reason.

Getting the park created was no small legislative undertaking. People and legislators had been trying for most of the 20th century. In 1965 it almost happened -- a Great Basin Park of 123,380 acres sponsored by senators Alan Bible and Howard Cannon, but it died when U.S. Rep. Walter Baring insisted on his own proposed 53,000 acre park legislation and refused their offer to cut 19,500 acres.

Darwin Lambert, a Nevada and Alaska newspaper editor and Nevada state legislator who wrote a book on the history of efforts to create the park, said in 1959, "The [national] park proposal has had enough support and publicity now to gain attention in all the top echelons, but still the trail to success is quite long. It is up to all of us in Nevada, interested in promoting the economy of the state and in preserving for all time an important park of America's heritage, to get behind this movement."

Finally in 1986 Reid did what others had been unable to do. The park began with 120 square miles, including Wheeler Peak and the Lehman cavern. With noncontiguous areas, 227.8 square miles are protected.

When, a hundred years from now, a graduate student is writing a thesis on Harry Reid's career, Great Basin National Park will be listed among his most important achievements.