The National Parks: America's Best Idea
History, Nature Documentary hosted by Ken Burn's
& Peter Coyote and published by PBS in 2009 -
English narration
Information
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The National Parks: America's Best Idea Filmed
over the course of more than six years at some of
nature's most spectacular locales - from Acadia to
Yosemite, Yellowstone to the Grand Canyon, the
Everglades of Florida to the Gates of the Arctic
in Alaska - The National Parks: America's Best
Idea is nonetheless a story of people: people from
every conceivable background - rich and poor;
famous and unknown; soldiers and scientists;
natives and newcomers; idealists, artists and
entrepreneurs; people who were willing to devote
themselves to saving some precious portion of the
land they loved, and in doing so reminded their
fellow citizens of the full meaning of
democracy.
A Monumental Documentary on the History of US
National Parks
Ken Burns' documentary The National Parks:
America's Best Idea (2009) is designed to run on
PBS television in six episodes of about two hours
each. The documentary doesn't give viewers much of
a feel for what it's like to visit a national
park; instead, the focus is on the history of US
national parks from their inception in the 19th
century up through the 1970s. Burns integrates his
coverage of the parks into the broad sweep of
American history from the vanishing frontier to
the advent of the automobile to the Great
Depression to the post-World War II boom in
tourism.
Yosemite, Yellowstone and Grand Canyon are old
and popular, so they are central to Burns'
history. There are 55 other national parks, and
several of these play significant roles in the
documentary, including Mesa Verde (Colorado),
Everglades (Florida), Great Smoky Mountains (North
Carolina and Tennessee), Acadia (Maine) and Denali
(Alaska). But Burns isn't trying to promote
specific attractions; he wants to exalt nature in
general and warn against commercial, logging,
mining and ranching interests.
Release Date: October 6, 2009
Number of DVD Discs: 6
Feature Runtime: 11 hours 35 minutes
There are 3 1/4 hours of bonus materials spread
over the six discs in the DVD set containing The
National Parks: America's Best Idea.
1) The Scripture of Nature
(1851-1890)
In 1851, word spreads across the country of a
beautiful area of California's Yosemite Valley,
attracting visitors who wish to exploit the land's
scenery for commercial gain and those who wish to
keep it pristine. Among the latter is a
Scottish-born wanderer named John Muir, for whom
protecting the land becomes a spiritual calling.
In 1864, Congress passes an act that protects
Yosemite from commercial development for "public
use, resort and recreation" - the first time in
world history that any government has put forth
this idea - and hands control of the land to
California. Meanwhile, a "wonderland" in the
northwest corner of the Wyoming territory attracts
visitors to its bizarre landscape of geysers, mud
pots and sulfur pits. In 1872, Congress passes an
act to protect this land as well. Since it is
located in a territory, rather than a state, it
becomes America's first national park:
Yellowstone.
2) The Last Refuge
(1890-1915)
By the end of the 19th century, widespread
industrialization has left many Americans worried
about whether the country - once a vast wilderness
- will have any pristine land left. At the same
time, poachers in the parks are rampant, and
visitors think nothing of littering or carving
their names near iconic sites like Old Faithful.
Congress has yet to establish clear judicial
authority or appropriations for the protection of
the parks. This sparks a conservation movement by
organizations such as the Sierra Club, led by John
Muir; the Audubon Society, led by George Bird
Grinnell; and the Boone and Crockett Club, led by
Theodore Roosevelt. The movement fails, however,
to stop San Francisco from building the Hetch
Hetchy dam at Yosemite, flooding Muir's "mountain
temple" and leaving him broken-hearted before he
dies.
3) The Empire of Grandeur
(1915-1919)
In the early 20th century, America has a dozen
national parks, but they are a haphazard patchwork
of special places under the supervision of
different federal agencies. The conservation
movement, after failing to stop the Hetch Hetchy
dam, pushes the government to establish one
unified agency to oversee all the parks, leading
to the establishment of the National Park Service
in 1916. Its first director, Stephen Mather, a
wealthy businessman and passionate park advocate
who fought vigorously to establish the NPS,
launches an energetic campaign to expand the
national park system and bring more visitors to
the parks. Among his efforts is to protect the
Grand Canyon from encroaching commercial interests
and establish it as a national park, rather than a
national monument.
4) Going Home
(1920-1933)
While visiting the parks was once predominantly
the domain of Americans wealthy enough to afford
the high-priced train tours, the advent of the
automobile allows more people than ever before to
visit the parks. Mather embraces this opportunity
and works to build more roads in the parks. Some
park enthusiasts, such as Margaret and Edward
Gehrke of Nebraska, begin "collecting" parks,
making a point to visit as many as they can. In
North Carolina, Horace Kephart, a reclusive
writer, and George Masa, a Japanese immigrant,
launch a campaign to protect the last strands of
virgin forest in the Smoky Mountains by
establishing it as a park. In Wyoming, John D.
Rockefeller Jr. begins quietly buying up land in
the Teton Mountain Range and valley in a secret
plan to donate it to the government as a park.
5) Great Nature
(1933-1945)
To battle unemployment in the Great Depression,
Franklin D. Roosevelt creates the Civilian
Conservation Corps, which spawns a "golden age"
for the parks through major renovation projects.
In a groundbreaking study, a young NPS biologist
named George Melendez Wright discovers widespread
abuses of animal habitats and pushes the service
to reform its wildlife policies. Congress narrowly
passes a bill to protect the Everglades in Florida
as a national park - the first time a park has
been created solely to preserve an ecosystem, as
opposed to scenic beauty. As America becomes
entrenched in World War II, Roosevelt is pressured
to open the parks to mining, grazing and
lumbering. The president also is subjected to a
storm of criticism for expanding the Grand Teton
National Park in Wyoming by accepting a gift of
land secretly purchased by John D. Rockefeller
Jr.
6) The Morning of Creation
(1946-1980)
Following World War II, the parks are overwhelmed
as visitation reaches 62 million people a year. A
new billion-dollar campaign - Mission 66 - is
created to build facilities and infrastructure
that can accommodate the flood of visitors. A
biologist named Adolph Murie introduces the
revolutionary notion that predatory animals, which
are still hunted, deserve the same protection as
other wildlife. In Florida, Lancelot Jones, the
grandson of a slave, refuses to sell to developers
his family's property on a string of unspoiled
islands in Biscayne Bay and instead sells it to
the federal government to be protected as a
national monument. In the late 1970s, President
Jimmy Carter creates uproar in Alaska when he sets
aside 56 million acres of land for preservation -
the largest expansion of protected land in
history. In 1995, wolves are re-established in
Yellowstone, making the world's first national
park a little more like what it once was.
Screenshots
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Technical Specs
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* Video Codec: XviD
* Video Bitrate: 1355 KB/s
* Video Aspect Ratio: 1:76
* Video Resolution: 704 x 400
* Audio Codec: (Dolby AC3)
* Audio BitRate: 48000Hz 448 kb/s tot, 6 chnls
(3/2 .1)
* Run-Time: 111mins - 131mins
* Framerate: 29FPS
* Number of Parts: 6
* Part Size: 1.46 GB
* Ripped by artistharry
* Subtitles: English
* Source: DVD
* Extra's Run-time : pts.1-3 = 25mins , pt.4 =
10mins ,pt.5= 44mins ,pt.6 = 62mins
Links
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1) Further Information
* www.pbs.org
2) Related Documentaries
* Secret Yellowstone
* Yellowstone: Realm of the Coyote
* Grand Canyon - The First Journey
* Grand Canyon
* Into Alaska
* America
3) ed2k Links
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Source:
http://docuwiki.net/index.php?title=The_National_Parks%3A_America%27s_Best_Idea