The Grand Canyon's Second Odd Couple

 

JOHN MUIR AND GIFFORD PINCHOT: 

LOVING THE GRAND CANYON AND LETTING THE PUBLIC IN ON IT

One strange aspect of the Powell-Harrison alliance to advance the idea of a Grand Canyon National Park (1882-1893) is how little public notice or activity there was. No speeches, no articles, no letter campaign. Whether this is due to a lack of historical research or whether the two just had many other issues on their minds, I wish I knew. 

If this existence out of the public eye seems true for the 1880’s, it certainly changed in the next decade, the 1890’s, featuring our second odd couple: John Muir and Gifford Pinchot. Visitation was starting to grow, and the railroad was coming, thus increasing the potential for public interest hugely, but these two epitomize pushing the Park idea and effort into public view. And  without seeming to take account of the Powell-Harrison effort. 

In conservation/environmental mythology, Muir and Pinchot have been forced into the roles of icons representing two “opposing” ideas of how to deal with the American West, its natural resources, its wonders. An eye-opening book for me on this subject is John Clayton’s Natural Rivals: John Muir, Gifford Pinchot, and the Creation of America’s Public Lands (2019, Pegasus Books). Clayton explores their relationship, including others’ interpretations of their views, especially the idea that they were in deadly opposition. Clayton sees them, not as opposed sides, but as friendly rivals, speaking from different ways of recognizing and protecting for the public what we now call our public lands.

For me, what is important is that one matter they were in full and fervent agreement on was promoting the creation of Grand Canyon National Park. I draw on Clayton’s account of their joint efforts for the details of this second grand alliance.

Muir, a man of the outdoors, a wilderness trekker, and a published essayist, was well-known in 1893, when he attended a  dinner at the very-upscale Pinchot family home on Gramercy Park in New York City (pp 5-14). Pinchot, much younger, just formulating his career, and Muir got on well. Indeed, Pinchot helped Muir with letters of introduction for Muir’s ensuing European travels. The two became correspondents, as Pinchot pursued his ideas for a career in forests. Muir was already active on behalf of the idea of creating a Yosemite National Park, in 1890 having written favorable articles for The Century magazine, that aided in its establishment that year. In the same period, Pinchot was travelling about, readying to make his career in forest-creating-and-careful-use. On a trip west, he experienced the Grand Canyon in religious ecstasy (p.70). 

Clayton sees Muir as the prophet, preaching “Nature is God” and not worrying about how to implement uses. Pinchot, Clayton characterizes as a “statesman” of nature, in the thick of implementation in the “real” world’(p.82).

This friendship/alliance was crucial when the National Academy of Sciences set up a Committee on the Inauguration of a Rational Policy for the Forested Lands of the United States in 1896 to look at the ownership and use of the country’s forests. This National Forest Commission -- Pinchot was made Secretary -- was to grapple scientifically with what had been the haphazard creation and uncertain administration of Forest Reserves and National Parks. Muir was brought onto the group to broaden and enliven its discussions as it travelled into the West. In its start-up, Pinchot and Muir became allies (p.170), and as far as the Grand Canyon went, any differences disappeared in their reverence for the place.

They had met three years before and corresponded regularly and warmly (p.174). They were the two youngest members on the Commission’s travels, naturally allied (p.174-5). One of the first exploratory stops was at the glacial Lake McDonald. Both of them recorded two magical evenings together, bonding, says Clayton; the grand setting inspiring “camaraderie and community”.

Significantly, it was at the Grand Canyon stop, that an incident of significance occurred. (pp.183-4). Together, they hiked actually along the rim (the others motoring to a designated scenic point). When Pinchot when to squash a tarantula also strolling the rim, Muir stopped him with: “It has as much right here as we.” Even with little food left, they chose to camp, collecting boughs to sleep on, and then talked on very late into the chilly night. Pinchot recalled an evening “as I have never had before or since”. Feeling like “guilty schoolboys”, they were certainly now advocates for the place spread out before them.

When the Commission's work was written up, Muir was stirred, and urged on by others, 1897-8, to a big publicity blitz. He wrote articles in favor of national parks & forests in Harper’s, then in Atlantic on “Wild Parks”. Clayton calls these the apotheosis of Muir’s ideas, a theme of spiritual uses in combination with the other purposes, what we call multiple-use lands — even for the Grand Canyon, with its lack of trees. (p.195) 

Clayton thinks the essays sound as if they had a dual byline: Muir’s rhetoric applied to Pinchot’s ideas. Far from having been split by the idea of reserves, Muir and Pinchot applied their talents and viewpoints both for keeping the lands as public, and for non-spiritual purposes (p.198). He argued for Parks AND Forests, public lands all.

The Commission’s report came out at the end of Democrat Cleveland’s Presidency and the  beginning of Republican McKinley’s.  It did recommend National Park status for the Grand Canyon, and also Mt. Rainier. On the overall issues of forests and their uses, there was much political footwork, but Congress finally did support the creation of Forest Reserves (1898). (pp.192-202) Muir’s articles did excite the public with their vividness and force. Clayton says (p.202) that Muir was writing at the peak of his powers, and in recognition of forests' multiple uses. Muir concluded, “Every remaining acre of unentered forest-bearing land…should be reserved, protected, and administered by the Federal Government for the public good forever.” (p.203)

Of course, the Grand Canyon Forest Reserve had already been created, thanks to the Powell-Harrison partnership. And while the Muir-Pinchot team, with the recommendation of the  Commission, advanced the Canyon’s cause, it would take a President with most expansive views, of his powers and the need for federal protections, to take the next great step to realize the Powell-Harrison vision.