In August 2016 the National Parks Service celebrated its 100 year anniversary. It had been a varied, tumultuous and some would say controversial 100 years. From parks having to be guarded by the army, to the extirpation of apex predators like wolves and cougars, to roads cutting through 80 miles of pristine wilderness and road cuttings seven foot wide through trees over 3,000 years old, to where today the 420 parks administered by the national parks service are loved by 292 million visitors – some would say loved to death and face a crowded and uncertain future.
Thus on the eve of our Nationals 250 th anniversary it is timely that we reflect on where we have come from – the changing goals of use, conservation, preservation and education and where are going in the twenty first century, as the author Terry Tempest Williams predicts a future of Park reconstruction in America.
This lively one hour presentation will look at the history of America’s national parks, how they changed over the century and what they have become today. We will meet characters like John Muir “Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul alike.”; Ebenezer Bryce who called his Canyon a “helluva place to lose a cow’ and Adolph Murie who described the visitor center in Denali as a Dairy Queen! We will see how America’s National Parks – America’s Best Idea according to the writer Wallace Stegner – have been translated around the world and suggest a future for one of our nation’s most treasured possessions.
Presenter: Dr Richard W. Benfield was formerly Professor of Geography at Central Connecticut State University in New Britain, Connecticut where he taught courses in Human Geography, the history and management of National Parks, Plants, Predators and Parks, Russia, The European Union and many of the courses in the department’s tourism track. Prior to coming to Central he was Senior Program Coordinator in the Division of Continuing Education at the University of Oklahoma where he instructed citizens of the new Russian Federation on privatization and the transition to a market economy. He obtained his doctorate in geography from the University of Oklahoma in 1998. Prior to commencing his teaching career at the University of Oklahoma, he was Vice-President of Marketing at Whistler Ski resort, Canada, home of the 2010 Winter Olympics, Executive Director of the Banff-Lake Louise Chamber of Commerce and a tourism marketing executive with the Government of Alberta.
In 2013 his book Garden Tourism was published by CABI Press, Abingdon, England.
Sponsored by the Friends of the Avon Library
Registration is required for this in-person event.