Mapping America's National Parks: Preserving Our Natural and Cultural Treasures

By Ken Burns, Dayton Duncan and US National Park Service

Get an insider look at the US National Park Service to see how they use maps and geospatial technology to protect and manage America’s national parks.

Maps easily cap your first greeting upon arrival at a national park, allowing you to visualize its vastness, plan your trip, and keep a compact souvenir of your visit. But for the US National Park Service (NPS), maps do more than provide guidance and navigation. Maps help the NPS protect visitors and natural resources. They help manage fires, both unplanned and prescribed. They provide a basis for preserving cultural resources, such as archaeological sites and historic buildings, and for establishing needed facilities, infrastructure, and transportation.

The maps in Mapping America’s National Parks: Preserving Our Natural and Cultural Treasures are not only beautiful representations of special places. Within the maps are layers of geographic information—a bevy of research and science—that the NPS uses to perform these myriad essential services and to ultimately fulfill their mission.

With over 240 full-color maps and photographs of national parks, monuments, battlefields, historic sites, lakeshores, seashores, scenic rivers and trails, and more, Mapping America’s National Parks takes you on a journey through our most treasured locations and shows how geographic information system (GIS) software helps the NPS keep the balance between park enjoyment and preservation.

Through stories told by their own staff, discover how GIS helps the NPS:

• provide security for individual wildlife species, members of a crowd at a peaceful demonstration, and entire ecosystems;
• analyze where people most likely are stranded, where they are least likely stranded, and distribute assets in search and rescue operations;
• develop strategic plans, budgets, and protection for fire management; and
• share intelligence on wildlife trafficking, zoonotic diseases, field medicine protocols, and more.  

Go behind the scenes to see how mapping and geospatial analysis support the full range of NPS natural resource stewardship and science activities. With NPS planning aided by geospatial technology, future generations of park visitors—your children and their children—will be able to enjoy our national parks for years to come.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Esri Press
• Release date: Feb 9, 2021
• ISBN: 9781589485471

Book preview

Cover for Mapping America's National Parks: Preserving our Natural and Cultural Treasures, by the United States National Park Service. Foreword by Ken Burns and Dayton Duncan.Half-title page for Mapping America's National Parks.Title page for Mapping America's National Parks: Preserving our Natural and Cultural Treasures, by the United States National Park Service. Foreword by Ken Burns and Dayton Duncan. Published by Esri Press in Redlands, California.

Cover credits: Aldo Leopold Wilderness Research Institute, Chad Lopez, Kass Green & Associates, NPS, USGS.

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e-ISBN: 9781589485471

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Contents

Foreword vii

Acknowledgments xi

Introduction xiii

1. Cartography in the National Park Service 1

The evolution of park maps

2. Recreation 21

Enjoying the parks

3. Visitor and resource protection 37

Protection and emergency services for the parks

4. Managing fire 55

GIS for planning—during and after fire response

5. Natural resources 77

Protecting and sustaining natural resources

6. Cultural resources 121

Caring for cultural resources

7. Facilities, infrastructure, and transportation 145

Establishing facilities, infrastructure, and transportation

8. Working with communities and partners 155

Cultivating community and partner relationships

9. Park management 169

Supporting park management


Index 185

Foreword

When Lewis and Clark returned from their historic exploration of the American West in 1806, they brought back news of lands teeming with wildlife (many never before described for science), vast prairies, a diverse array of American Indian people, and mountains much, much bigger than Thomas Jefferson imagined. The myth of a fabled Northwest Passage—a waterway across the continent that explorers since the time of Columbus had been seeking—died with their report.

Proof of it was made clear with a map William Clark put together and published in 1814, based on his own calculations of their route using dead reckoning. But it also contained information gathered from American Indians (some drew maps in the dirt to explain the terrain) and from consultations with fur trappers who visited him in St. Louis in intervening years. It is one of the seminal maps of the United States’ own westward journey to the Pacific—and also, we think, a lovely work of art.

On it, Clark included information he got from a former member of the expedition, John Colter, who had remained for years in the West and became a legendary mountain man. In one extraordinary journey, Colter traversed the headwaters of the Yellowstone River and traveled into the Teton range of what is now Wyoming. Clark’s map tracing Colter’s route shows a large lake and places denoted as Hot Spring Brimstone and Boiling Spring and a river called Stinking Water. For years, Easterners derided the mountain men’s tales of sulfurous geysers and boiling mud pots as Colter’s Hell—as seemingly fanciful as the myth of a Northwest Passage.

Later explorations—bringing back photographs, paintings, and yes, more detailed maps—proved that such a place did, in fact, exist. In 1872, it became the world’s first national park: Yellowstone.

As this beautiful and important book demonstrates, maps are still intertwined with everything associated with America’s best idea—from helping millions of visitors navigate their own journeys of discovery to helping the National Park Service better manage the wildlife and landscapes it protects and preserves for future generations. As Honorary Park Rangers—and lifelong lovers of maps—we’re thankful to Esri for continuing this great tradition.

Ken Burns and Dayton Duncan,

The National Parks: America’s Best Idea, documentary and book (2009)

William Clark’s 1814 map from Library of CongressMap of parks mentioned in this volume.

Library of Congress, Geography and Map Division

Acknowledgments

Many thanks to all the dedicated National Park Service (NPS) professionals and partners who contributed to this effort, particularly the authors who patiently answered questions and shared information about how the NPS uses maps and geospatial data to meet its mission. Thanks also to the park and program managers who wrote chapter introductions that bring to life how maps aid in the myriad of NPS operations, including resource and visitor protection, scientific research, and telling the story of America’s greatest treasures.

In addition, sincere thanks to the NPS staff who reviewed each article for this book: Laura Babcock, Denver Service Center Planning Division; Matt Colwin, NPS Midwest Region; Brian Deaton, National Trails Office; Jamie Hoover, Natural Resource Stewardship and Science; Lauren Kramer, Saguaro National Park; Thi Pruitt, Yellowstone National Park; Sarah Rivera, National Trails Office; and Emily Tristant, Denver Service Center Planning Division.

The NPS system map highlighting park units featured in this book was created by Jake Coolidge, NPS Resource Information Services Division.

Thanks also to the NPS Arrowhead Committee for guidance in the production of this book.

Ethics and legal reviews were provided respectively by the NPS Ethics Office and the Office of the Solicitor, US Department of the Interior.

Special gratitude and credit for this book go to the NPS map book team whose perseverance made this book possible: Peter Bonsall, National Trails Program; Jennifer Carlino, Resource Information Services Division; Nell Conti, NPS Intermountain Region; Vanessa Glynn-Linaris, Glen Canyon National Recreation Area and Yosemite National Park; Jean Olson, NPS Northeast Region; and Douglas Wilder, Denver Service Center Planning Division.

Finally, thanks to the staff at Esri Press for their work in guiding this book to publication. Our profound thanks to Jack Dangermond, president of Esri, for his enduring support of the NPS mission: to preserve unimpaired the natural and cultural resources and values of the national parks for the enjoyment, education, and inspiration of this and future generations.

All images are courtesy of the National Park Service unless otherwise stated.

Introduction

Tom Patterson, NPS Harpers Ferry Center for Media Services (retired)

Maps and the US National Park Service (NPS) mission are inextricably linked. The founding legislation of the NPS, the Organic Act of 1916, famously describes the dual, and sometimes conflicting, mission of the agency:

....to conserve the scenery and the natural and historic objects and the wildlife therein and to provide for the enjoyment of the same in such manner and by such means as will leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations.

To achieve both objectives—enjoyment and preservation—the NPS relies heavily on maps. Consider enjoyment. A map is the first information that visitors receive from the friendly ranger when entering a park. Its primary function is orientation and navigation; the map guides them to the visitor center, points of interest, and various facilities that make for a comfortable and safe visit. But that is only part of what the map does. It can also tell interpretive stories about things not readily apparent—for example, troop movements at a site that today looks more like a manicured park than a battlefield, previous geologic events, and future climate change. As an interpretive tool, the visitor map helps connect the tangible with the intangible, allowing people to better understand and appreciate the park they are in.

The visitor map is the public-facing

Reviews for Mapping America's National Parks

[Jessica Oxford · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Interesting. Cool to see the ways maps and gis are used.