AAA Pathfinder Anton L. Westgard was the leader of the Park-To-Park Expedition.

Transcription

1

2 AAA Pathfinder Anton L. Westgard was the leader of the Park-To-Park Expedition. Many of the roads encountered were rutted, muddy and prone to flooding. Yellowstone National Park, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming

3 Glacier National Park, Montana Mt. Rainer National Park, Washington Crater Lake National Park, Oregon Yosemite National Park, California The trip, which started in Denver, Colorado, traveled in a loop throughout the West and visited the following national parks: Rocky Mountain in Colorado; Yellowstone in Wyoming; Glacier in Montana; Mount Rainier in Washington; Crater Lake in Oregon; Lassen Volcanic, Yosemite, General Grant (now Kings Canyon) and Sequoia in California; Zion in Utah; Grand Canyon in Arizona; ending back in Colorado at Mesa. At that time, only five other national parks existed: Acadia in Maine, Denali in Alaska, Haleakalā and Hawaii Volcanoes in Hawaii, and Wind Cave in South Dakota. In the early 1900s, auto tourism was being launched, and highway systems were being advanced, says David Louter, chief of Cultural Resources for the National Park Service s Pacific West Region. Stephen Mather [the first director of the National Park Service] endorsed the creation of the National Park-to-Park Highway because it offered a way to connect many of the major existing national parks. And by providing some kind of defined highway route or designated touring highway, it promoted traveling by automobile to our parks. AAA APPROVED Automobile clubs were a tremendous support for Mather, notes Louter. The clubs vetted people who voted or who would contact members of Congress in support of projects that would support parks, which, to a large extent, didn t have very big operating budgets when they were created. Westgard, a cartographer and organizer of the Survey Map Company, which developed maps for automobile route information, joined AAA in the early 1900s. Known as the Pathfinder, he was responsible for laying out numerous transcontinental routes, including the Lincoln Highway. In the early part of 1920, Mather tapped Westgard to map out a route between the national parks. At the time, named routes were a favorite of long-distance drivers, and Mather hoped to use the popularity of these routes to drive auto traffic into the parks. By connecting 100 cities in addition to 12 national parks, Westgard s route suggested that if they wanted to see all of the national parks, all they had to do was drive, says Louter. A slogan seen on maps for the National Park-to-Park Highway also encouraged travelers to hit the open road: You sing America ; why not see it?

4 A HISTORIC TOUR On the day Westgard and his group left for their Park-to-Park adventure, a large crowd gathered in Denver s Overland Park to cheer them on. Politicians made speeches, and Mather announced to the crowd, With Denver the gateway, as it is, to all national parks, it is the fitting place for the pathfinders to start their journey. Or, should we say before they began their formidable undertaking. Traveling by car throughout the West at that time was difficult at best if not downright perilous. Roads, still unpaved, were rutted, muddy and prone to flooding in rainy weather. Service stations and roadside accommodations were few and far between. Averaging 65 miles a day, the group suffered from hazards such as violent weather, road washouts and vehicle breakdowns. But along the way, they were joined by other hardy travelers, even if just to tag along in a single park or two, who offered support and encouragement. And in each town they visited, tour members would give speeches on the importance of supporting roads to the national parks. Better roads would mean more tourists spending more money. The allure of the National Park-to-Park Highway was reinforcing this idea of national parks as being available to and belonging to everyone that they were accessible to all, says Louter. It made people think of parks as part of their daily life, and you can see that in the shorter tours that people took. By the time the group returned to Denver, stories of their journey had been shared, and the idea of taking a road trip to a national park was firmly ingrained in the American imagination as was the concept of a national park system. The National Park Service was created in 1916, but this tour was the first to connect parks to each other, notes Louter. It helped us think of them as part of one system, whereas before they were singular. Now they were connected. Even Mather had high hopes for the highway s success. I believe the opening of the National Parkto-Park Highway will greatly stimulate automobile travel to the West next summer, he said during the return celebration. Sadly, however, the National Park-to-Park Highway didn t last. By 1926, U.S. highways were being numbered, and as automotive technology Park-To-Park explorers visit Yosemite National Park in October Navigating a mountain road near Pend Oreille, Idaho

5 increased and road quality and infrastructure improved, travel to our national parks changed. In some cases, localities did mark the roads as part of the National Park-to-Park Highway, but it was more of a booster route than any official signage, says Louter. Automobile touring changed because cars kept improving and roads kept improving, and at some point, the route itself may have lost some of its distinction because nobody needed to know how to find the parks. They didn t need a special route because they could just follow a highway map. Today, in honor of the National Park Service s centennial, many modern-day adventurers and bloggers are re-creating the route and sharing their travels online. The roads may be better and the cars may be more reliable, but the scenery still continues to inspire.<< Kings Canyon and Sequoia National Parks, California Zion National Park, Utah Grand Canyon National Park, Arizona Mesa Verde National Park, Colorado IN THE PATHFINDER S OWN WORDS Anton Westgard probably summed up the importance of the National Park-to-Park Highway best in his 1920 book, Tales of a Pathfinder. There are 18 national parks, of which 10 are especially noteworthy, and all of which should be seen by every American, worthy of the name, before he starts globetrotting. Most of the famous scenic wonders of other lands would not seem to him so impressive if he were in position to draw comparisons between them and those in the national parks of his own land. There are no glaciers in the Alps surpassing those of Glacier National Park in Montana, there are no geysers in the world even approaching in interest those of Yellowstone National Park. Where on earth is there any chasm even faintly approaching in grandeur the indescribably colorful vastness of the Grand Canyon of Arizona? Mount Rainier National Park in Washington is in a class by itself, and Crater National Park in Oregon is a blue gem like the finest jewel, incomparable to any other scenic spot on earth. And where on the face of this mundane sphere is there a spot with charms equal to those of the Yosemite National Park in California? The oldest living things in the world are the giant redwood trees in the Sequoia, now the Roosevelt National Park, in the Sierra Nevadas of California. The prehistoric ruins of the Mesa Verde National Park in Colorado were probably ancient when the pharaohs built the Pyramids, and the towering peaks, moraines and glaciers of the Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado are only a few miles from one of the large cities of the West and easily accessible to millions of our people without undue consumption of time or expenditure of money, while the rainbow colors on cliffs and crags in the newly created Zion National Park in Utah defy an artist s brush. All of these parks which, of course, are not parks in the sense of city parks, but vast rugged regions, often thousands of square miles in extent and teeming with perpetually protected game are left in the primeval condition of nature and are accessible by motor car.