Happy Birthday National Park Service!

I went to a birthday party yesterday at the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. Yes, the NPS turned 100. Lady Liberty continues to draw people to her island and to our shores, and Ellis Island bears witness to the diverse strength of our people. More about this in a future posting.

Rangers at the base of the Statue of Liberty holding the lyrics to "This Land is Your Land"
(Photo by Hunner)

For now, a highlight was a group of Girl Scouts at the base of the Statue of Liberty signing “This Land is Your Land” with rangers holding up cue cards with the lyrics so we could sing along. Check out their Facebook page for a clip of it. It touched me in a surprising way, since I got chocked up. When I asked Supervisory Park Ranger Melissa Magnuson-Cannady about the choice of the song, she had a simple answer: “These parks are your land.” So happy birthday NPS. Congratulatory messages are coming in across the board, from President Obama to Nicolas Kristoff. Here’s mine.

Driven by History has celebrated our parks and historic sites since February with weekly blogs. Some parks are the jewels in the crown, like the Grand Canyon which still takes my breath away, Yosemite with its magnificent wilderness, and the majestic Statue of Liberty. Others are pinky-toe parks with small visitation and scant staff that require determination to get to and imagination to envision. Since I already honor the parks with my weekly blogs, this posting celebrates the creation of the National Park Service and the people, past and present, who made it happen and keep it going.

Many people find spiritual renewal in our parks. Their spirits soar with the landscapes, their senses come alive to the sounds and smells, their souls revitalized with tall trees, glaciers, grizzlies, and waterfalls. I too am nourished by wilderness, but I also get rejuvenated at our historical parks. The past grabs me in hardy embraces, and I am fascinated by our predecessors who created our country and then changed it again and again. Our national parks preserve this history and narrate what we have achieved and how we continue to work towards our best idea—the Declaration of Independence.

A century ago however, most Americans did not find communion with sublime nature, but saw the seemingly boundless resources in our continent solely as sources for profit. Others did grow concerned about the vanishing wilderness. One of the most influential was John Muir who I wrote about in a previous blog. In his ten books and over 100 articles, he helped launch the preservation movement with calls like this: “The forests are not inexhaustible, quick measures must be taken if ruin is to be avoided.”

Others joined him. In 1908, Republican President Teddy Roosevelt acknowledged: “We have become great because of the lavish use of our resources, but the time has come to inquire seriously what will happen when our forests are gone, when the coal, the iron, the oil, and the gas are exhausted, when the soils have still further impoverished and washed into the streams, polluting the rivers, denuding the fields and obstructing navigation.”

Roosevelt worked to pass the Antiquities Act of 1906 which gave presidents the authority to designate public lands as national monuments. Within ten years, presidents had designated twenty-one national monuments across the country, but no bureau to manage them or the parks. Consequently, some parks lost valuable resources. For example, part of Yosemite National Park was lost to San Francisco in 1913 when Hetch Hetchy Valley was dammed to provide water to the Bay Area. This loss motivated the preservationists to work for the creation of the NPS in 1916.

The idea that public lands needed protection from those who wanted to extract resources from them dates back to after the Civil War when a movement to preserve Yellowstone gained momentum. It resulted in our first official national park in 1872. Setting aside the groves of giant sequoias in California and the waterfalls in Yosemite established the next parks in the 1890s. More followed. By 1916, the U.S. had fourteen National Parks.

A wealthy Chicago businessman, Stephen Mather, loved the existing parks. He complained to the Interior Secretary Franklin Lane about the deterioration of the parks who invited Mather to come to Washington to straighten things out. Mather realized that the parks needed their own agency. Some resource extraction companies fought against protecting these public lands. Additionally, some federal agencies did not want to share their lands with a national parks bureau, especially the Department of Agriculture’s Forest Service. By emphasizing the economic benefits of parks as a tourist draw, Mather won over Congressmen to his cause, and President Wilson signed the enabling legislation for the National Park Service on August 25, 1916.

As with any new agency in government, creating the NPS was a political act. In fact, creating every park has been a political act since our elected officials do it. Vested interests often fight new park proposals. A convoluted example of this concerns the Grand Canyon. Ralph Cameron arrived at the Grand Canyon as a miner in 1890. In the coming years, he filed dubious mining claims so that he could charge people to hike on the Bright Angel Trail. In 1919, the Grand Canyon became a National Park but Cameron continued to act as if he owned the trail from the South Rim. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled against him, the NPS tried to dislodge him, but after he got elected as a Senator for Arizona, he used his office to defund operational funding for the Grand Canyon so he could continue to profit from tourists hiking on the Bright Angel Trail. In 1926, Cameron lost his reelection bid, exposed for using his office to help him profit at the Canyon. The Bright Angel Trail became part of the NPS in 1928.

Congressional opposition to the parks continues today. The Center for American Progress has found that over the last three years, conservative members of Congress have introduced forty-four bills or amendments to strip away protection for national parks. Some in Congress want to devolve units of the NPS to state ownership. And the Republican Party’s 2016 official platform states: “Congress should reconsider whether parts of the federal government’s enormous landholdings and control of water in the west could be better used for ranching, mining or forestry through private ownership.”[1] Our public lands, especially those protected by the NPS, continue to be targeted by a dedicated group in Congress. 

In fact, funding for the NPS has declined 15% over the past fifteen years despite the addition of twenty-two new units in just the last eight years. The NPS estimates that it has a backlog of deferred maintenance of $1.2 billion. In the historic preservation field, we call this “demolition by neglect.”

Nonetheless, our parks enjoy robust public support. Over 300,000,000 people will visit the parks this centennial year. To take care of that many visitors to the 413 units of the NPS, three key groups of people make the parks work. First, permanent NPS staff manage many of the aspects of park operations, from interpretation to preservation to administration to maintenance to search and rescue (yes, places like the Grand Canyon and Yosemite have a team of rangers to help those visitors who are lost or injured while hiking and camping).

The second group are seasonal park employees who work during the peak summer months. They are college students doing an internship, recent graduates, retirees, and people who are dedicated to the parks. A total of about 22,000 people—permanent, temporary, and seasonals—work for the NPS.

The third group of people are volunteers. The parks would not be able to operate at the level they do without volunteers who sit at the reception desks, who give tours, and who help with maintenance and preservation. Over 200,000 volunteers make the parks happen. Here are some of the park people that I have met recently.

Retired elementary school teacher Tom Wilson at Ft. Clatsop in Oregon role played being a sergeant with the Corps of Discovery. Blacksmiths Dennis Torresdahl and John Prutus at Fort Vancouver in Washington demonstrated working hot iron at their fur trading site. Maria Wynn and Kay Morrison at the Rosie the Riveter/World War II Home Front park in California are true Rosies who welded the Liberty ships that helped win the war. All the above are volunteers who enriched my experiences at the parks.

Ranger Alisa Lynch showed her commitment to telling the story of Japanese American internment camps during the war at Manzanar in California. Ranger Robert Petersen at Huffman Prairie Field explained the dramatic events at the place where the Wright Brothers perfected their flying machines. Rangers Joe Ratterman and Kate at Hopewell Heritage in Ohio argued with me and each other about the theories of the people who lived there 2,000 years ago. Rangers Joel Shockley and Richard Zahm at Washita spent a good part of a morning discussing with me the events of Custer and Black Kettle at their site. Ranger James and volunteer Paul shared with me their deep knowledge about the French and Indian War at Fort Necessity in Pennsylvania.

Volunteer Roxanne Sullivan, who lives near where Flight 93 crashed on September 11, 2001, shared with me her experience as she first grappled with this horrid tragedy and then healed through taking care of the items left at the site by visitors. These are just a few of the many people who I met and engaged with on a wide variety of topics. I am a better historian hearing about our pasts from them, and I am a better citizen knowing that we have such dedicated, caring, and lively people preserving and interpreting our past.

So happy birthday National Park Service. We are a better country having you around. Our parks nourish us, enlighten us, and explain us. And they are fun to visit. For me, celebrating this birthday at the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island was a blast.

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[1] Oliver Milman, “The Political Crusades Targeting National Parks for Drilling and Exploitation,” The Guardian, 8/23/2016. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/aug/23/national-parks-100th-birthday-political-threats?cmp=oth_b-aplnews_d-1.

Road notes for August 22, 2016

Last week, after I left the Women's Rights NHP at Seneca Falls, I drove east looking for the Erie Canal. I crisscrossed it several times and ended up at Syracuse where I stopped at the Erie Canal Museum. Housed in the Weight Lock House where barges were weighed as they plied the waterway, the museum offers an engaging account of this important economic and transportation avenue to the west.

Erie Canal between Rochester and Syracuse (Photo by Hunner)

I then went to Fort Stanwix National Monument in the middle of Rome, New York where a decisive battle of the Revolutionary War took place in 1777. Feeling inspired by this visit, I launched a series of stops over the rest of the week at other American Revolution sites—Saratoga Battlefield NHP, Fort Ticonderoga, Boston NHP, and the Minute Man NHP.

Cannon demonstration at Fort Stanwix (Photo by Hunner)

One if by sea, two if by land (Photo by Hunner)

The North Bridge at Concord where the Patriots exchanged gunfire with British Regulars and started the American Revolution (Photo by Hunner)

I also snuck in a couple of 19^th century sites, the first at Lowell NHP where the beginning of America’s industrial age began.

The Weave Room at Lowell NHP (Photo by Hunner)

Then I went north to Salem Maritime NHS which spurred the growth of the new Republic between the Revolution and the War of 1812 as its tall ships sailed around the world seeking commerce and trade. Interestingly enough, the ships brought back a lot of luxury items, especially spices and silk from Asia. Wasn’t that what Columbus sought?

The Customs House at Salem Maritime NHP where duties were collected on imported goods which financed most of the early Republic's government.(Photo by Hunner)

I ended the week with a visit to Adams NHP south of Boston where the Adams presidents resided and influenced the birth and early history of the United States. Finally, I went to another living history park at Plimouth Planation. More about these visits as I have time to write them up.

The Adams Home in Quincy, Massachusetts (Photo by Hunner)

This week on August 25, the National Park Service turns 100. Please celebrate it by going to a park, remembering some of your past park trips, and letting your family, friends, and elected representatives know what our parks mean to you. I will post a blog about the NPS on Thursday to help celebrate the anniversary. In the meantime, party with your parks!

Gov. Bradford and Julianne Morton at the Plimouth Plantation in 1626 (Photo by Hunner)

Fort Necessity National Battlefield, Farmington, Pennsylvania and Boston National Historical Park, Boston, Massachusetts

Like many of us, George Washington fumbled his early attempt at leadership. In fact, he botched it so bad that he launched a world war. We call it the French and Indian War, the Europeans call it the Seven Years War. To understand the American Revolution, we first need to visit Fort Necessity where Washington surrendered to the French in 1754. This war, while ultimately won by the British, led directly to the American Revolution. So Washington’s mistakes set in motion two wars that transformed the world and helped create these United States. The next several weeks’ postings in Driven by History will cover the lead up to and then the American Revolution. We start with Fort Necessity, the only NPS site that preserves and interprets the French and Indian War.

George Washington as an older man (From exhibit at Ft. Necessity's visitor center)

In 1754, Lt. Col. Washington went west with a military force to contest the French’s presence in the Ohio River Valley. When I arrived at Fort Necessity’s visitors center, Ranger James took me to the mock-up of the battle encased behind Plexiglas. He explained that Britain and France had competing claims on North America which centered on the Ohio River Valley. Virginia claimed it as an extension westward of its colony’s boundaries. France had been in the region for years as its fur traders plied the waterways of the Ohio and the Mississippi Rivers. These rivers also provided a vital link between New France up north and Louisiana in the west. In a time of rough roads and slow wagons, rivers served as the quickest way to travel long distances.

Map of the contested lands between England and France south of the Great Lakes
(From exhibit at visitors center)

James also offered some insight into George Washington. He was twenty-three years old at Fort Necessity, with little formal nor military education, but instead worked as a surveyor. He did have ambition, leadership ability, and a capacity to learn from his mistakes. Fort Necessity was where Washington began his military career.

To assert itself, the French established several forts in the region, including driving the Virginians out of their small stronghold at the forks of the Ohio River where Pittsburg now stand. The French expanded and renamed it Fort Duquesne. In April, Lt. Col. Washington went to the region to request that the French leave. They did not. The English then set up camp in a marshy area called the Great Meadows which Washington thought was “a charming field for an encounter.”

Replica of Ft. Necessity in the Great Meadow (Photo by Hunner)

Scouts brought news that French group of soldiers were nearby. At dawn on May 28 at Jumonville Glen, Washington with forty soldiers and some Seneca allies attacked the French. Commanded by Joseph Coulon de Villiers, Sieur de Jumonville, the French fought back but were quickly defeated, with ten dead and twenty-one captured. De Sieur was killed, perhaps scalped by the Seneca chief Tanaghrisson, aka the Half King. Washington lost one man and had two wounded. Paul Haney, a volunteer that led my tour down to the replica of Fort Necessity, speculated that the Half King wanted the British and French to fight each other so he goaded the English into this attack. This brutal attack on a French party led to the American Revolution.

Suspecting that the French would quickly respond, the English prepared for a counter attack by building a circular palisaded fort in five days at the Great Meadows. Several days after the encounter, the commander of the British forces, Colonel Fry, was thrown from his horse and died. Washington became the commander in the field. Washington had about 300 men under his command, which was reinforced later with 100 British regulars from South Carolina led by Captain James Mackay. But perhaps a quarter of his men were unfit for duty.

The view of Ft. Necessity from where the French stood (Photo by Hunner)

On the morning of July 3, 600 French and 100 Indian allies attacked Fort Necessity. They were led by Captain Louis Coulan de Villiers, the slain Joseph’s brother. The French first killed all the cows and horses in the fields outside of the small fort to prevent the English from leaving. Stiff action lasted the whole day with casualties on both sides, and as rain came down harder and harder, the English, pressured by the French and Indians, grew more desperate in their fort. Around thirty of their soldiers had died.

Hut within Ft. Necessity where Washington signed the surrender document (Photo by Hunner)

Then, Captain de Villiers offered peace terms and after a long evening of negotiations, Washington surrendered. The British retained their baggage and weapons and retreated to Virginia. The French burned Fort Necessity. Lost in the translation of the surrender document from the French, Washington accepted personal responsibility for assassinating Joseph de Villiers. Within a couple of months, the French had the signed document back in Europe, illustrating that the English were proud of being assassins.

The day long battle at Fort Necessity sparked the war between England and France for the control of the North American continent. It also initiated a wider war between these two colonial powers in Asia and on the high seas. The Seven Years War ended in 1763 with the French expelled from Canada and India.

Consequences, both intended and unintended, came from this victory. An intended consequence was that the lands west of the Appalachian Mountains opened up to settlement by the English colonists. For Britain’s Indian allies, this was poor recompense. Treaties arose that moved them off of their ancestral lands and created reservations for them, which were invariably broken as settlers pushed ever westward.

War wampum belt (From exhibit at visitors center)

An unintended consequence was that some of the key colonial military leaders of the Revolution earned their stripes in this conflict. A more significant unintended consequence was the changed relationship between England and her colonies. Looking for ways to pay off both the war debt and the expenses of running their expanded empire, King George III and Parliament turned to the prosperous American colonies. The English argued: Didn’t the war begin in the colonies? Didn’t the colonies need the continued protection of the British military? Surely, the colonists grasped that they should pay their fair share. So they placed more taxes on their American colonies.  

While all the colonies were subject to taxes, the people in Massachusetts proved particularly troublesome to the King’s wishes. So let’s shift from Fort Necessity to Boston. I stopped by Faneuil Hall on a hot August day and stood in line with several hundred people. I asked the man in front of me if this was the right line for the visitor’s center and he shook his head: “No I’m taking the oath.” On Thursdays, naturalization ceremonies occurred at the Great Hall of Faneuil Hall.  I congratulated him and slipped into the ground floor and the NPS welcome center.

I got on a tour of part of the Freedom Trail led by Ranger Bill Casey. He said that Faneuil Hall has protected the rights of Englishman since 1742. These rights—to vote, to assemble, and to debate—were threatened by the new efforts of the Crown. Bill asked us to complete James Otis’s declaration in Faneuil Hall, “Taxation without representation is … tyranny.” The colonists had no representatives in Parliament since the Lords did not want to share their power with the provincials.

A particularly odious tax on the colonies was the Stamp Act of 1765. It required revenue stamps on newspapers and most printed material, even playing cards. Thus, the Stamp Act angered the influential people who shaped public opinion—the newspaper editors, lawyers, and tavern owners. As a result, open acts of rebellion flared, including the sacking of the Bostonian homes of the Lt. Gov. Thomas Hutchinson and his brother-in-law Andrew Oliver, a stamp act commissioner. In response in 1768, the British sent troops to Boston to quell the growing rebellion, which the Bostonians had to house.

The stamp required for all printed materials from the act of 1765.

On March 5, 1770, a lone British sentry marched between his barracks and the customs’ house across the street. He cried out as a group of youths pelted him with snowballs and rocks. Soldiers poured out of the nearby barracks and tussled with the gathering crowd. A British solder fired, then more shots rang out, killing five and wounding another eight. Ironically, one of the first persons killed in the fight for freedom was Crispus Attucks, a runaway slave who worked on the ships in the harbor. Future president John Adams defended the British soldiers charged with murder since he felt that without a fair trial, rule by mob threatened justice. Of the ten British soldiers, two were convicted of manslaughter, the rest were absolved. Nonetheless, the Boston Massacre escalated the conflict.

Ranger Bill ended our walking tour in front of the Old South Meeting House, the biggest building in North America in the 18^th century. It could hold 4,000 to 5,000 people. At this Congregationalist Church, on December 16, 1773, Samuel Adams launched the Boston Tea Party. A group of men disguised as Mohawk Indians stormed three ships in the Boston harbor and dumped 342 chests of tea into the frigid waters to protest the taxes.  Parliament punished Boston with the Coercive Acts, aka the Intolerable Acts, which closed the port until the equivalent of over $1,000,000 in today’s dollars was paid for the tea. Only the governor, Gen. Thomas Gage, could approve public assemblies. The British military now ruled Massachusetts. Discontent grew in Boston and other cities in the colonies.

In next week’s blog, we will return to Boston and the shot heard ‘round the world and then follow the war at other NPS and historic sites. Also on August 25, the National Park Service turns 100. Please celebrate it by going to a park, remembering past park trips, and letting your family, friends, and elected representatives know what our parks mean to you. Party with your parks!

Fort Necessity was designated a National Battlefield Site on March 4, 1931 and a National Battlefield in 1961. Boston National Historical Park was created on October 1, 1974.

Hopewell Culture National Historical Park, Chillicothe, Ohio

The mound at Seip earthworks (Photo by Hunner)

After visiting the Wright Brothers and their inventions in the 20^th century, I dropped down to southern Ohio to the 2,000-year-old Hopewell Culture site. Here earthen mounds dot the landscape, enduring evidence that a civilization existed that was a capitol of the eastern part of our eastern continent.

Here's a recap from earlier blogs about the peoples in North America before contact with Europeans. Once people arrived in the Western Hemisphere, they spread over the landscape like water through a burst dam.  They roamed the countryside, hunting and gathering their way from the frozen tundra near the Bering Sea to the equally frigid tip of South America, from the steamy jungles in the tropics to dense woodlands in the hinterlands, from mountains to beaches to swamps to deserts. Whatever way humans immigrated to the Americas, once here they moved over the countryside, and like migrants today, they looked for the perfect place to live and thrive.

Obsidian spear point (From exhibit at Mound City visitor's center)

These humans built complex buildings and communities solely with stone tools. They hunted large mammals like mammoths and bison with spears and bows and arrows, and butchered their kills with sharp stone knives. They carved and painted art on rock walls and made religious and ornamental objects out of shells, turquoise, bones, and even the landscape itself. These humans also studied the heavens and developed a complex understanding of the movement of the sun, the moon, and the planets. They flourished for hundreds of generations and lived in all corners of what would be become the United States.

Painting of shaman performing a ceremony (From exhibit at Mound City Visitors' Center)

As early as 3,500 years ago, people in southern Ohio began burying their dead with goods that showcased the skills and artistry of their craftspeople. Ranger Joe Ratterman pointed to archeological evidence that Mound City (where the visitors’ center is) was perhaps a crematorium as well as a burial site. Sometimes, the dead were cremated and then the building was burned and a mound built over it. At other sites, a cremation fire pit was used multiple times with the ashes buried elsewhere in the compound. At some point, they covered the first fire pit with a mound, and then put a new fire pit above the exact spot of the first fire pit. Since archeologists have different theories about the Hopewell, he asked me to add qualifiers to my account. Perhaps I will.

Above, a collection of artifacts from the mounds. Below, an Great Blue Heron effigy pipe
(From Mound City Visitors' Center)

The burial mounds hold numerous artifacts. Archeologists have discovered copper earspools, headdresses, breastplates, lithic chips from making stone tools, and effigy pipes. A bag in one grave held 200 broken effigy pipes carved out of stone depicting animals such as a beaver, a great blue heron, a frog, a peregrine falcon, a turtle, a squirrel, an otter, a rabbit, a raven, and an owl. Hammered copper also looked like various animals, humans, and other objects. All of these illustrate the exquisite workmanship and wealth of the Hopewell people. In one burial, thousands of pearls surrounded six skeletons. In other mounds, archeologists found a delicate profile of a hand and a bird claw, both made out of fragile mica. Archeologists have discovered 180,000 artifacts in the mounds.

Bird claw made out of mica found in a mound (From exhibit on walking tour at Mound City)

These funeral objects also hint at a deeper motivation – a spirituality that pervades the 500 nations in the Americas. From origin beliefs to migration stories, Native Americans imbued their world with a rich spirituality. From such stories, Alvin Josephy in 500 Nations, his history of Native Americans, concluded: “The Creator, the Master of Life, the Great Spirit, Wakan Tanka—whatever terms the various Native American groups used – breathed life into humans and bound their spirits to those of all else in their universe.” [1] For many Native Americans, both animate and inanimate things possessed a spirit that enlivened all that surrounded them.

Hammered copper mountain goat horns (From exhibit at Mound City Visitors' Center)

The objects found in the burial mounds give us a glimpse of the Hopewell way of life. Sea shells from the Gulf of Mexico, mica from the mountains in North Carolina, fossil shark teeth from the Chesapeake Bay, copper and silver from the Great Lakes region, and obsidian from the Yellowstone area point to a vast trading network that covered almost two thirds of the country – from the Rocky Mountains to the Atlantic. Ranger Kate at the visitors’ center talked about how these goods came to the Mound Builders. She said that perhaps the Hopewellians mounted trading expeditions themselves, went to the above places, and returned with the goods. The evidence is that there is little distribution of such items between say the Rocky Mountains and Hopewell. That is, traders would have bartered and left a trail of these goods along the way, and there is no evidence of that. However these items got to Hopewell from around the continent, the artists there turned them into exquisite pieces of beauty.

Map of materials that the Hopewellians used (From Mound City walking tour exhibit panel)

The Mound Builders grew squash, sunflowers, marsh elder, and knotweed while continuing to hunt and forage far and wide for food and material. Ranger Joe disagreed with me about when corn made an entrance. I thought it was early enough that it helped create the Hopewell culture since it came to New Mexico 3,000 years ago and then would have spread across the continent. He said there is no evidence of corn until towards the end of this culture.

Archaeologists speculate that maybe  this culture developed strict hierarchical lines with an elite body of priests and managers directing the efforts of many people to dig the earth, carry basketfuls of the dirt to the mounds, and build the massive earthen architecture that rose high over the land. Whether this was free or slave labor is unknown. From the simple early burial sites of 3,000 years ago, the mounds evolved into elaborate platforms for ceremonies and even served as residences of the elite. Large ceremonial complexes grew around the mounds so much that archaeologists estimate that the city at Cahokia (1,000 years after Hopewell but still mound builders) had 10,000 to 20,000 people there – more than London at the time.

Monk's Mound at Cahokia east of St. Louis (Photo by Hunner)

Some experts also speculate that the mounds housed astronomical observatories that tracked the seasons. Perhaps the mounds served as landscape calendars like at Chaco Canyon and were aligned to mark summer and winter solstices and equinoxes. In an agricultural society without written calendars, having a way to tell when to plant and when to harvest, proves vital to the success of the community. Perhaps the city planners situated Mound City where it was because two peaks on the eastern horizon line up with the north and south limits of the 18.6-year cycle of where the moon rises.

Another fascinating congruence is that at least three of the five sites preserved in the Hopewell Culture NHP follow a common pattern. Each have walls that mark a square, a large circle, and a small circle. Each square is the same size, twenty-seven acres. And each square fits onto the large circle. This pattern repeats itself, even at sites that are sixty miles distant from each other.

The geometry of the Seip complex where the square fits into the large circle
(From exhibit at Mound City visitors' center)

Mounds in a variety of sizes and shapes pervaded this region. Just in the Ohio River Valley alone, ten thousand mounds dotted the landscape. In addition to the traditional circles, squares, and elliptical shapes of the mounds, some illustrated intriguing shapes. These “effigy mounds” depicted birds, serpents, panthers, bears, and even humans. Built between 1,300 and 700 years ago, these fascinating shapes occurred mainly in Iowa, Illinois, and Wisconsin. This was a vibrant and interconnected culture.

The Mound Builders started to decline even before contact with European explorers in the middle 1500s. Whatever the cause, they might be the ancestral peoples for many of the tribes that have lived in the region, even to this day. DNA matching from the human remains in the mounds with today’s tribes is pending. It is possible that the tribes of the Apalachee, Caddo, Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, Houma, Kansa, Missouri, Mobilian, Natchez, Osage Nation, Quapaw, Seminole, Yamasee, Yuchi, and others are descendants of the Mississippian mound builders.

Side of the square at Mound City (Photo by Hunner)

The people who lived in the central part of the United States 2,000 years ago had a sophisticated understanding of the world. Agriculturally based, they positioned their mounds to mark the passing of the seasons, they had a vast network of trade and commerce, and they probably had a stratified social structure that included priests and rulers supported by craftsmen, farmers, and possibly slaves.

The Mound City Group National Monument was established by President Warren G. Harding in 1923 to preserve prehistoric mounds of "great historic and scientific interest." Hopewell Culture National Historical Park was established in 1992 by combining the Mound City Group National Monument with Hopeton Earthworks, High Bank Works, Hopewell Mound Group, and Seip Earthworks.

Driven by History now turns down the road to the American Revolution. This week on August 25, the National Park Service turns 100. Please celebrate it by going to a park, thinking about past park trips, and letting your family, friends, and elected representatives know what our parks mean to you. Party with your parks!

My Centennial gig rig next to a mound at the parking lot of the Mound City visitor's center

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[1] Alvin M. Josephy, Jr., 500 Nations: An Illustrated History of North American Indians (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1994).

Notes from the road, August 15, 2016

Driven by History has a problem. Or to be more accurate, I have a problem. I visit a lot more places every week than I can blog about. So in addition to my weekly postings about several of the places that I have visited recently, I will also write a review to catch you up on where I’ve been and what I’ve done over the last week or so. Eventually, all these places will have their own history. In the meantime, here’s a short review.

At the end of July, I left New Mexico and drove east along Route 66. I already wrote about Washita Battlefield NHS and Route 66. I stopped off at the Oklahoma City Bombing site where 168 people lost their lives in this act of domestic terrorism on April 19, 1995. The NPS has a presence there at the reflecting pool with its stark monument of 168 chairs, one for each of the victims including nineteen small chairs for the children who were at the day care center. I talked with a NPS ranger who admitted that this is hard duty, interpreting the horror and death of the mass bombing that destroyed so much—so many lives, so much property, so many people’s belief in an innocence that was obliterated by this tragic event.

The empty chairs and reflecting pool at the Oklahoma City Bombing Site

From a conversation at Washita with Ranger Richard Zahm, I altered my route and went to Pea Ridge Battlefield National Military Park in northwest Arkansas. Called the Gettysburg of the West, 16,000 men fought here in 1863 as the south tried to invade Missouri and secure it for the Confederacy. Ranger Ashleigh called this a “pinkie-toe” park in that it was out of the way and didn’t attract the visitation of the big parks. As with many places that witnessed intense violence on a massive scale, Pea Ridge is now peaceful, while the visitors’ center and the panels on the driving tour evoke the chaos of battle.

As I drove east, I kept crossing the Trail of Tears where thousands of Native Americans trudged west to Indian Territory in the 1830s as they were forced from their ancestral lands in the Southeast. More about this story when I get North Carolina.

Above, a marker for the Trail of Tears at Pea Ridge Battlefield. Below, my rig overlooking one of the fields of battle at Pea Ridge. (Photos by Hunner)

After Pea Ridge, I jumped back on Route 66 at Joplin and headed to St. Louis and the Jefferson Expansion National Memorial. The iconic arch beckoned from afar as I drove into town but once I arrived under the shining symbol of westward expansion, I was disappointed that the museum was undergoing a renovation. I did spend time at the Old Courthouse where slaves Dred and Harriet Scott sued for their freedom in 1854 because they had traveled with their owner to several free states.

Above, a sculpture of Dred and Harriet Scott in front of the Old Courthouse in St. Louis. Below, the construction of a new visitors' center under the Arch. (Photos by Hunner) 

Ultimately, the U.S. Supreme Court sided with slavery, denied the Scotts’ their freedom, and fueled the growing controversy that led to the Civil War. I also watched a documentary about the building of the Arch in the 1960s. As this engineering marvel rose above the Mississippi River, I marveled at the construction workers perched 600 feet above the ground without any safety ropes or harnesses, casually smoking cigarettes as they spun the multi-ton sections into place. No one died on the job.

Tour Guide Gary talking about Monk's Mound behind him (Photo by Hunner)

Just east of St. Louis are the Cahokia Mounds, the biggest pre-contact earthen structures in the Americas, made a thousand years ago by Native Americans. This massive municipal project illustrates the complex civilization that supported between 10,000 to 20,000 people, a population that was greater than London at the time. As I climbed the 100 foot tall Monk’s Mound in the early evening, I met a couple from Chicago who recommended that I return the next morning to go through the impressive museum run by the Illinois State Parks. I am glad I did since I saw artifacts from excavations, 

explanations of life at Cahokia, and then took a tour of the mounds with volunteer Gary. A retired IT guy, Gary became absorbed by researching the Cahokia culture. Now he leads tours of the mounds.

Lewis and Clark's keelboat at the Lewis and Clark State Park north of St. Louis (Photo by Hunner)

Another interesting Illinois State park just up the road from Cahokia is the Lewis and Clark Center. The winter before the Corps of Discovery left on their journey to the Pacific Ocean in 1804, they stayed at Camp Dubois near the confluence of the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers. Like at Cahokia, this state park’s museum ably told the story of the Lewis and Clark expedition across the continent, including a full scale replica of the keelboat they took up Missouri River.

National Road Marker along Route 40 (Photo by Hunner)

At St. Louis, Route 66 veered north while I went east on another historic road, Route 40—the National Road through Illinois and Indiana to Indianapolis. I teach living history at New Mexico State University and so am attracted to NPS sites and museums that offer this kind of interaction with visitors. North of Indianapolis lies Conner Prairie, the oldest living history park in the country, a place I have wanted to visit for decades. Dr. Catherine Hughes, their chief of interpretation, gave me a tour, and then I spent the rest of the day at Conner Prairie time traveling through Indiana in the 19^th century.

A family enjoying Conner Prairie (Photo by Hunner)

I continued along the remnants of the National Road to Dayton, where I visited the Wright Brothers bicycle shop and visitor’s center and then Huffman Prairie Field, the world’s first airport. There Wilbur and Orville figured out how to maneuver and control their flying machines at Huffman Field. On the day I stopped by, the NPS had a replica of one of the Wrights’ early planes on display.

Effigy pipe excavated from the burial mounds at Hopewell Culture NHP (Photo by Hunner)

After this dose of early 20^th century aviation history, I ducked down into southern Ohio to Hopewell Culture NHP to explore more pre-contact mounds. One thousand earlier than Cahokia, the mounds at the five sites of Hopewell are more intimate and just as mysterious. The main museum for Hopewell showcases many of the artifacts found in the mounds, including hammered copper figures, effigy pipes, and a silhouette of a hand made out of Carolina mica.

Fort Necessity in Pennsylvania (Photo by Hunner)

Crossing the Ohio River, I then spent a morning at Fort Necessity where a young George Washington suffered a defeat in the French and Indian War in 1754. I drove an hour or so and came to the Flight 93 National Monument where I relived that awful day in 2001. The rangers and volunteers at this memorial all commented on how they are reclaiming both the sites natural beauty as well as reconciling the horrendous events that changed our country.

Looking through a gate to the sacred place of the Flight 93 crash site (Photo by Hunner) 

Heading north from Flight 93, I stopped at another site of tragedy at the Johnstown NM where a flood in 1889 killed over 2,000 people. I spent a couple of days with my step-brother Barry, his wife Shelly and kids Meredith and James in southwestern New York where I visited a counterpart to the Wright brothers at the Glenn Curtiss Museum. There I heard an alternative narrative to aviation history. Barry and I also took a quick swing through the Corning Glass Museum where we saw intricately designed vials from several thousand years ago, glass sculptures from today, as well as how fiber optics work. That day ended with Shelly’s dad Bob proudly showing me the old railroad cars and replica of a steam engine that he has helped restore over the last forty years.

Bob in front of the replica of a steam locomotive (Photo by Hunner)

This two week segment of Driven by History ended with a visit to the Women’s Rights National Historical Park at Seneca Falls, New York where the Declaration of Sentiments was signed in 1849, the start of the fight to gain the right to vote for women.

The restored church where the Declaration of Sentiments was signed in 1849 (Photo by Hunner)

I have yet to find the time to drive to history, visit the essential historic places, and write them all up for my weekly blog. I will eventually get to these individual sites and do them justice, but since I visit five or six places a week and write up at most half that many, I am accumulating quite a backlog.

Being driven by history means that I am visiting as many sites as I can for the rest of this year. It means absorbing as much of our nation’s past at individual places before I pop behind the wheel of my truck and head to the next site. And it means assembling a somewhat fragmented narrative about our country on the fly, as I sped down the road, listening to the latest news about our fractured politics while interacting with normal people along the way. I am witnessing historic sites in a land of plenty, of fields ripe with crops, of commerce and community, of industrious people with full families enjoying the summer on the front porches of Anytown USA. I am experiencing the best of our country. I am a lucky guy.

Dayton Aviation Heritage NHP, Dayton, Ohio

The most famous brothers in the 20^th century surely are Orville and Wilbur Wright. The NPS has two major units dedicated to their revolution in transportation—one at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina where they first accomplished powered flight and the other at Dayton, Ohio which contains five units across the city. Here’s their story.

Neither Wilbur (1867-1912) nor Orville (1871-1948) earned their high school diplomas, but instead invented from an early age. In 1889, they started a printing business, first as newspaper publishers and then as commercial printers. One of their early clients was Paul Laurence Dunbar, a celebrated African-American poet and writer.

Wright Brothers printers (from exhibit at visitors' center)

Looking for new business opportunities, in 1892 the brothers opened a repair shop to tap into the growing popularity of bicycles. By 1896, they were building small numbers of their own brand, called the Hercules. Their printing and bicycle businesses allowed them both the time and the machine shop to pursue another interest. Spurred on by news of experiments in flight, Wilbur in 1899 wrote the Smithsonian Institute and asked for any information about aeronautics. More about the Smithsonian later.

They flew kites around Dayton and asked the U.S. Weather Bureau where reliable winds blew. In 1900, Wilbur and Orville took their gliders and camped out at Kitty Hawk on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. From watching birds fly, they developed a concept called Wing Warping that torqued the wings to allow some control over flight. Nonetheless, progress was slow that year and the next and on the train home from the 1901 experiments at Kitty Hawk, Wilbur said to Orville that man would not fly for 1,000 years.

That winter, they built a wind tunnel at their bike shop and conducted over 200 experiments on the shape of wings. They also worked on creating a light weight engine for their plane. They returned to Kitty Hawk in 1902, set up shop in a tent on the wind swept dunes, and completed between 700 and 1,000 flights with their glider that fall. This plane “embodied their core invention, a complete system of flight control…. The 1902 glider represented a stunning breakthrough.” In fact, when they applied for a patent several years later, they submitted the plans for the glider and its controls instead of their powered plane.[1]

Replica of the 1902 glider (from exhibit at visitors' center

The Wrights returned to Kitty Hawk on September 26, 1903. On December 17th, Wilbur and Orville traded off climbing aboard their bi-plane for short powered flights. On his second flight, Wilbur traveled 852 feet and remained airborne for almost a minute of flight. The Wrights had attained the long sought dream of human flight. They returned to Dayton and decided to continue flight experiments closer to home. They had proved that humans could fly. They now needed to create a practical plane that could be controlled in the air.

Catapult and track at Huffman Field (Photo by Hunner) 

Winds at Huffman Prairie Field north of Dayton did not blow as hard as at Kitty Hawk. To compensate, in 1904 they built a catapult to fling their planes into the air, much like aircraft carriers use today. The challenge in creating a practical plane entails finding ways to control the three directions that a plane must navigate—pitch or up and down, right and left, and yawl or roll. Small wings called elevators control the pitch, rudders point the plane right or left, and wing warping controls the roll of a plane.

The three directions that planes move (From exhibit at visitors' center)

Failures plagued the Wright Brothers, including accidents like the one when Orville lost control and crashed into the field at 30 mph.  Finally, on October 5, 1905, Wilbur took off in a plane of fabric and wood and stayed aloft for almost forty minutes covering twenty-three miles in circles around Huffman field. The brothers then they halted all of their flights since they feared that others would steal their invention and applied for patents to protect their invention. The U.S. granted them a patent in 1906 which lasted until 1923. Others challenged their monopoly as we shall see. The next time the brothers flew (and the first time as a public demonstration) was in France on August 8^th, 1908 when they kept their plane up for an hour and forty-five minutes. They became international heroes, feted at home and abroad.

Path of flight on October 5th (From exhibit at Huffman Field)

At Huffman Prairie Field on the day I visited, Robert Petersen stood next to a replica of an early Wright Brothers’ plane. A gifted story teller, Robert impressed on the visitors that the day of the importance of this field for the Wrights. It gave them a nearby place to test their models and so was the world’s first air port. The key successes came in 1905. The year before, they had flown 105 flights and were aloft for forty-nine minutes. In 1905, they conducted fifty flights and were in the air for 262 minutes. I asked Robert why Dayton was the right place at the right time for this invention. First, he said that few places in the U.S. had the ability to cast aluminum block engines, but Dayton did. He also stated that Dayton was Invention City—it had more patents per capita than anywhere else in the country. He reeled off some of the inventions that happened here—the electric starter for cars, air conditioning, fast drying paint, the bar code, the step ladder, pop top openers for cans, and the Yellow Pages. The National Cash Register (NCR) not only invented the mechanical cash register in Dayton but it also served as an incubator for people who later created Frigidaire, Delco, IBM, and Lear Jet. Looking out over Huffman Prairie Field, he concluded: “Kitty Hawk was the first powered flight. Here is the rest of the story. There are very few places where you can stand that transformed the world. This is one of those places. I can tell all of world history right here.”

NPS ranger Robert Petersen at Huffman Field (Photo by Hunner)

The Wright Brothers’ success lit a fire under aeronautic innovators around the world. Now that the Wrights had proved that human flight was possible, innovations burst into the air like a covey of quail spooked out of a bush. One of the most prolific innovators was motorcycle pioneer Glenn Curtiss. Here are some of his accomplishments on the heels of the Wrights. The most important was that Curtiss put ailerons on his planes which allowed for greater control of the flying machines. Using the ailerons, Curtiss racked up an impressive list of firsts in aviation history:  he flew the first public flight of a plane in the U.S. in 1908; he built the first commercially available airplane in 1909; he flew from Albany to New York City, a long distance record at the time, in 1910; he earned the first pilot’s license in 1911; he built the first plane that took off from water in 1911 and developed the first flying boat in 1912; he invented the first dual pilot control in 1911; he created the first retractable landing gear in 1911; he produced 6,000 Jenny airplanes for the Allies in World War I; and his Curtiss NC-4 was the first plane to fly across the Atlantic with stops in the Azores in 1919. The Glenn Curtiss Museum in Hammondsport, N.Y. celebrates these accomplishments.

Glenn Curtiss at controls of his early plane (From exihibit at Curtiss Museum)

So why are there two National Park units dedicated to the Wrights, an Air Force Base named after them, and we all know about Wilbur and Orville but not about Glenn? I asked this to the people at the Curtiss Museum. The best answer came from the crew renovating a P-40, the Warhawk fighter, in a workshop behind the main building. Their theory is that the Wrights had deposited their Kitty Hawk plane on display in London. Samuel Pierpont Langley, the director of the Smithsonian Institution, and an aeronautics pioneer in his own right, wanted to secure the plane for the museum. The deal he brokered with the Wrights was that they would donate their plane but the Smithsonian would not mention the accomplishments of Curtiss. As one staff member said when I asked why the lack of recognition, “It’s political.”

An advertisement for Curtiss's school and pontoon plane (From exhibit at Curtiss Museum)

Tom Crouch in his First Flight book covers the controversy. In 1914, the Smithsonian had loaned Director Langley’s unsuccessful plane the Aerodrome to Curtiss who rebuilt and flew it. Then the Smithsonian displayed it as the first machine capable of flight. In 1928, Orville sent their 1903 plane to London’s Science Museum, vowing to keep it there until the Smithsonian acknowledged that the Wright plane was, well the right plane. Finally in 1942, the museum admitted that Langley’s plane was not the first, and the world’s first airplane was unveiled at the Smithsonian on Dec. 17, 1948.[2] Was there an agreement to downplay Curtiss’s innovations? I can’t say.

The Wright Brothers’ had little success in advancing aeronautics after they proved that human flight was possible. They fought with Curtiss and others over infringements on their invention, and some say that Wilbur died in 1919 stressed over these battles. Whatever the subsequent history of aviation, Wilbur and Orville opened the door for human flight and changed our world. Their invention ranks as one of the most revolutionary ones of all time. 

The Wright Brothers National Monument at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina was authorized as Kill Devil Hill Monument March 2, 1923, transferred from the War Department to NPS in 1933, and renamed on December 4, 1953.The Dayton Aviation Heritage National Historical Park was created on Oct. 16, 1992 to preserve the sites in Dayton connected to the Wright Brothers and to honor Paul Laurence Dunbar, a renowned African-American poet and writer who had the Wrights print some of his books.

Next Monday evening, I will post a new blog on Hopewell Culture National Historical Park and the 2,000 year old mounds preserved at that site.

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[1] Tom D. Crouch, First Flight: The Wright Brothers and the Invention of the Airplane (Division of Publications, NPS: Washington, D.C., nd). 56.

[2] Ibid, 100.