Fifty years of majestic trails
Fifty years ago, the ever-evolving national park idea — that a nation’s most majestic and sacred places should be preserved for all time and for everyone — broadened again. In
1968, Congress passed and President Lyndon Johnson signed the National Trails System Act and the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act. Previously, the national park idea had been applied to natural wonders like Yellowstone and the Grand Canyon, and then to historic sites like Gettysburg and Independence Hall. The two landmark pieces of legislation of
1968 meant that America would also start protecting long, linear parts of our landscape “for the benefit and enjoyment of present and future generations.”
The trails system now has a presence in all 50 states. They include the famed Appalachian Trail that stretches 2,100 miles from Georgia to Maine, and the even more daunting 2,600mile Pacific Crest Trail that runs from Mexico to Canada. The Ice Age Trail winds through the woodlands (and sometimes through the streets of small towns) of Wisconsin; the Florida Trail goes from Big Cyprus National Preserve in South Florida to the Gulf Islands National Seashore in the Panhandle. Some trails allow biking and horseback riding; some are restricted to foot traffic only. Some are thousands of miles long; a few are only a mile or less.
Some trails were designated not just to give Americans the chance to enjoy the outdoors and the magnificently varied beauty of our land but also to help them understand how the nation’s movement across the continent shaped our history and our character. Along most national historic trails, you can travel by car, with certain sites designated for stopping and stretching your legs while you learn about the people who traveled that way long before you.
You can trace the path Spanish explorers took from what is now Mexico into Texas in the late 1600s on the El Camino Real de los Tejas. On the Trail of Tears National Historic Trail you can follow the route taken by the Cherokees in the 1830s, when they were forcibly removed from their homelands in the Southeast and made to march a thousand sorrowful miles to what is now Oklahoma. You can travel trails across the West that took pioneers to Oregon, Mormons to Utah, and Forty-Niners to the gold fields of California in the 1840s; and you can visit old way stations of the Pony Express in the 1850s. If you’re interested in more contemporary American history, the Selma to Montgomery National Historic Trail commemorates the 54-mile march of non-violent civil rights activists, led by Martin Luther King Jr., which helped galvanize the nation to pass the Voting Rights Act of
1965.
The Wild and Scenic Rivers Act was enacted to preserve rivers (or portions of rivers) with outstanding natural, cultural and recreational values in a free-flowing condition — simultaneously improving their water quality and making it possible for modern Americans to experience the joy of floating and fishing what Thomas Jefferson called “the great arteries of this country.”
Fifty years after the act’s passage,
12,734 miles of 208 rivers in 40 states have benefited from it — an impressive number, though only 0.25% of the nation’s river miles. They include 23.5 miles of the Lamprey in our home state of New Hampshire; 180 miles of the Delaware in Pennsylvania, New York and New Jersey; 61.4 miles of the Sipsey Fork of the Black Warrior in Alabama;
240 miles of the Rio Grande in Texas;
122 miles of the Merced in California;
27.4 miles of the Snoqualmie in Washington; 66.4 miles of the Pere Marquette in Michigan; and 92.5 miles of the Allagash in Maine. You could spend the year circling the Lower 48 and visiting those rivers — or simply enjoy, as we do, saying the names of American rivers aloud and loving the sheer poetry of it.
The rivers and trails are administered by state and local governments, the National Park Service, Forest Service, and Bureau of Land Management; and many have volunteers and local friends groups passionately devoted to their protection and promotion. It’s their dedication, building on the foresight of those who first encouraged Congress to take action, that keeps those rivers wild and scenic, those trails maintained — and all of it accessible to the American people.
Which brings us back to the White Cliffs of the Missouri, our favorite stretch of a favorite river. In the 1960s, a dam had been proposed that would have entombed much of it under a reservoir. Thanks to the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act, that plan was stopped. Because of the National Trails System Act (and its subsequent expansion), it is also now part of the Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail, which oversees protected historic sites and interpretive centers in 11 states. And in 2001, thanks to another law — the Antiquities Act of 1906 (which President Theodore Roosevelt passed and then invoked to save the Grand Canyon) — President Bill Clinton provided extra protection to this confluence of natural beauty and historical significance when he designated it the Upper Missouri River Breaks National Monument.
We sometimes imagine bringing Lewis and Clark back along their historic trail, up that big river and over the mountains to the Pacific. Much of what they’d see, Lewis would note, demonstrates how easily mankind can thoughtlessly destroy nature’s handiwork. But the White Cliffs, at least, represents another rare combination: when citizens and wise government join to demonstrate what Americans can achieve once they accept the responsibility we all share to make sure that scenes of visionary enchantment never have an end.