Introduction

On the Road to America (Photo by Marcello Brivio)

"Driven by the Past" is an exploration of our country’s past by exploring the places where significant events happened. By visiting these places that forged our nation, by getting to know the people who created our country at those places, Driven by the Past narrates the story of the United States through the parks that illuminate our ideals and beliefs, that reflect our complex history, and that inspire us to love our country. We’re going on a road trip to our National Parks.

2016 is the 100^th birthday of the creation of the National Park Service, and their centennial motto is “Find Your Park.” To celebrate this anniversary, I am traveling to and writing about as many parks as I can. From May to November, I will crisscross the country, visit places of sheer beauty and of momentous events, and blog about my experiences. Join me for the ride.

Here’s the plan.  Every week from now until mid-May, Driven by the Past will post brief histories of a National Park every Monday. We’ll begin with the Bering Land Bridge National Preserve to get a handle on how humans came into the Americas. Then we will visit Native American parks— Hopewell Mounds in Ohio, Chaco Culture in New Mexico, Jamestown (before the Europeans arrived) in Virginia, and  Pu’u’uhonula O Honauhau park in Hawaii. The pre-contact peoples developed advanced civilizations that rivaled those in other parts of the world. After surveying some of the peoples who lived here before the Europeans arrived, we will travel to El Morro, New Mexico for the Spanish Entrada into the desert, Jamestown (again) for the English jumping onto the shores of Virginia, the African Burial Grounds in lower Manhattan about colonial slavery, and Grand Portage in Minnesota for the French traders paddling through the waters of the continent.

In May, all this changes. I hit the road for the rest of the year. I will visit National Parks in the West, in the North, in the East, in the South. Along the way, I will continue to blog about the parks, about their significance, about their beauty, about what people did there, and what people still do. So come join the journey and travel with me to our national parks.

At this point, when I say join me, I want to be clear that I’m not personally inviting all of you to ride in my RV and visit all of these places. Not that I wouldn’t want to travel with you all…. On second thought, why not? I think we’d all find that very interesting. So come along and show me your park.

The first leg of the road trip is through the West—going down the Santa Fe, Oregon, and California Historic Trails, tromping over the hills at Little Big Horn, seeing the thermal abundance at Yellowstone, feeling geologic time at Yosemite and the Grand Canyon. We will also visit pre-contact Native American sites, frontier forts, World War II parks, and many other units of the NPS.

Then, in the fall, I will head east and south and encounter awe inspiring Native America places, colonial and revolutionary war sites, parks about nation building, industry, immigration, war, and expansion. We will visit places where momentous events happened, events that shaped our nation and ourselves.

In writing these histories, I am literally driven by history. I have put on thousands of miles as I visit the far flung historical jewels of our national parks. Driving those long hours allows me time to ponder what I have witnessed, to analyze what it means, and to figure out how to tell the story of our country. From my windshield musings, three themes emerge that are interwoven throughout our nation’s pasts: mobility, exchange, and innovation. We are a country of  inventive immigrants, from the first humans who set foot in the Americas to European colonists to people today who seek our shores. Whoever we are today, wherever we live, whatever we believe, however we support ourselves, whatever lessons we pass onto our children originate in our many pasts. Despite our nation’s focus on the future, we are products of our history.We are as driven by our past as we are motoring through the present.

So come join these journeys across our nation and through our past. We will drive the land, write about the parks, and get to know our country and ourselves.Come drive into the past with me. I mean it. Each and every one of you. Wow! That’s a lot of people, we'd better get started.